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The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories by Twain, Mark, 1835-1910
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories by Twain, Mark, 1835-1910
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Language: English
By Mark Twain
CONTENTS:
It was many years ago. Hadleyburg was the most honest and upright town
in all the region round about. It had kept that reputation unsmirched
during three generations, and was prouder of it than of any other of its
possessions. It was so proud of it, and so anxious to insure its
perpetuation, that it began to teach the principles of honest dealing to
its babies in the cradle, and made the like teachings the staple of their
culture thenceforward through all the years devoted to their education.
Also, throughout the formative years temptations were kept out of the way
of the young people, so that their honesty could have every chance to
harden and solidify, and become a part of their very bone. The
neighbouring towns were jealous of this honourable supremacy, and
affected to sneer at Hadleyburg's pride in it and call it vanity; but all
the same they were obliged to acknowledge that Hadleyburg was in reality
an incorruptible town; and if pressed they would also acknowledge that
the mere fact that a young man hailed from Hadleyburg was all the
recommendation he needed when he went forth from his natal town to seek
for responsible employment.
But at last, in the drift of time, Hadleyburg had the ill luck to offend
a passing stranger--possibly without knowing it, certainly without
caring, for Hadleyburg was sufficient unto itself, and cared not a rap
for strangers or their opinions. Still, it would have been well to make
an exception in this one's case, for he was a bitter man, and revengeful.
All through his wanderings during a whole year he kept his injury in
mind, and gave all his leisure moments to trying to invent a compensating
satisfaction for it. He contrived many plans, and all of them were good,
but none of them was quite sweeping enough: the poorest of them would
hurt a great many individuals, but what he wanted was a plan which would
comprehend the entire town, and not let so much as one person escape
unhurt. At last he had a fortunate idea, and when it fell into his brain
it lit up his whole head with an evil joy. He began to form a plan at
once, saying to himself "That is the thing to do--I will corrupt the
town."
"Pray keep your seat, madam, I will not disturb you. There--now it is
pretty well concealed; one would hardly know it was there. Can I see
your husband a moment, madam?"
No, he was gone to Brixton, and might not return before morning.
The old lady was afraid of the mysterious big stranger, and was glad to
see him go. But her curiosity was roused, and she went straight to the
sack and brought away the paper. It began as follows:
"TO BE PUBLISHED, or, the right man sought out by private inquiry
--either will answer. This sack contains gold coin weighing a hundred
and sixty pounds four ounces--"
Mrs. Richards flew to it all in a tremble and locked it, then pulled down
the window-shades and stood frightened, worried, and wondering if there
was anything else she could do toward making herself and the money more
safe. She listened awhile for burglars, then surrendered to curiosity,
and went back to the lamp and finished reading the paper:
"But if you shall prefer a public inquiry, then publish this present
writing in the local paper--with these instructions added, to wit: Thirty
days from now, let the candidate appear at the town-hall at eight in the
evening (Friday), and hand his remark, in a sealed envelope, to the Rev.
Mr. Burgess (if he will be kind enough to act); and let Mr. Burgess there
and then destroy the seals of the sack, open it, and see if the remark is
correct: if correct, let the money be delivered, with my sincere
gratitude, to my benefactor thus identified."
Mrs. Richards sat down, gently quivering with excitement, and was soon
lost in thinkings--after this pattern: "What a strange thing it is!
. . . And what a fortune for that kind man who set his bread afloat upon
the waters! . . . If it had only been my husband that did it!--for we are
so poor, so old and poor! . . ." Then, with a sigh--"But it was not my
Edward; no, it was not he that gave a stranger twenty dollars. It is a
pity too; I see it now. . . ." Then, with a shudder--"But it is GAMBLERS'
money! the wages of sin; we couldn't take it; we couldn't touch it. I
don't like to be near it; it seems a defilement." She moved to a farther
chair. . . "I wish Edward would come, and take it to the bank; a burglar
might come at any moment; it is dreadful to be here all alone with it."
At eleven Mr. Richards arrived, and while his wife was saying "I am SO
glad you've come!" he was saying, "I am so tired--tired clear out; it is
dreadful to be poor, and have to make these dismal journeys at my time of
life. Always at the grind, grind, grind, on a salary--another man's
slave, and he sitting at home in his slippers, rich and comfortable."
"I am so sorry for you, Edward, you know that; but be comforted; we have
our livelihood; we have our good name--"
Then his wife told him the great secret. It dazed him for a moment; then
he said:
"It weighs a hundred and sixty pounds? Why, Mary, it's for-ty thousand
dollars--think of it--a whole fortune! Not ten men in this village are
worth that much. Give me the paper."
"And in the meantime, while you are running on with your jokes, the money
is still here, and it is fast getting along toward burglar-time."
"True. Very well, what shall we do--make the inquiry private? No, not
that; it would spoil the romance. The public method is better. Think
what a noise it will make! And it will make all the other towns jealous;
for no stranger would trust such a thing to any town but Hadleyburg, and
they know it. It's a great card for us. I must get to the
printing-office now, or I shall be too late."
But he was gone. For only a little while, however. Not far from his own
house he met the editor--proprietor of the paper, and gave him the
document, and said "Here is a good thing for you, Cox--put it in."
At home again, he and his wife sat down to talk the charming mystery
over; they were in no condition for sleep. The first question was, Who
could the citizen have been who gave the stranger the twenty dollars? It
seemed a simple one; both answered it in the same breath--
"Barclay Goodson."
"Yes," said Richards, "he could have done it, and it would have been like
him, but there's not another in the town."
"It is what he always called it, to the day of his death--said it right
out publicly, too."
"Oh, of course; but he didn't care. I reckon he was the best-hated man
among us, except the Reverend Burgess."
"Well, Burgess deserves it--he will never get another congregation here.
Mean as the town is, it knows how to estimate HIM. Edward, doesn't it
seem odd that the stranger should appoint Burgess to deliver the money?"
"Mary, maybe the stranger knows him better than this village does."
The husband seemed perplexed for an answer; the wife kept a steady eye
upon him, and waited. Finally Richards said, with the hesitancy of one
who is making a statement which is likely to encounter doubt,
"He is not a bad man. I know. The whole of his unpopularity had its
foundation in that one thing--the thing that made so much noise."
"That 'one thing,' indeed! As if that 'one thing' wasn't enough, all by
itself."
"How you talk! Not guilty of it! Everybody knows he WAS guilty."
"Mary, I give you my word--he was innocent."
"It is a confession. I am ashamed, but I will make it. I was the only
man who knew he was innocent. I could have saved him, and--and--well,
you know how the town was wrought up--I hadn't the pluck to do it. It
would have turned everybody against me. I felt mean, ever so mean; ut I
didn't dare; I hadn't the manliness to face that."
Mary looked troubled, and for a while was silent. Then she said
stammeringly:
"I--I don't think it would have done for you to--to--One mustn't
--er--public opinion--one has to be so careful--so--" It was a difficult
road, and she got mired; but after a little she got started again. "It
was a great pity, but--Why, we couldn't afford it, Edward--we couldn't
indeed. Oh, I wouldn't have had you do it for anything!"
"It would have lost us the good-will of so many people, Mary; and
then--and then--"
"I can explain it. It's another confession. When the thing was new and
hot, and the town made a plan to ride him on a rail, my conscience hurt
me so that I couldn't stand it, and I went privately and gave him notice,
and he got out of the town and stayed out till it was safe to come back."
"So do I, now, for it would have been a dreadful way to treat him. Yes,
I'm glad; for really you did owe him that, you know. But, Edward,
suppose it should come out yet, some day!"
"It won't."
"Why?"
"Because everybody thinks it was Goodson."
"Just like Goodson; it's got all the marks. He had only one vanity; he
thought he could give advice better than any other person."
"It settled the business, and saved us, Mary. The subject was dropped."
Then they took up the gold-sack mystery again, with strong interest. Soon
the conversation began to suffer breaks--interruptions caused by absorbed
thinkings. The breaks grew more and more frequent. At last Richards
lost himself wholly in thought. He sat long, gazing vacantly at the
floor, and by-and-by he began to punctuate his thoughts with little
nervous movements of his hands that seemed to indicate vexation.
Meantime his wife too had relapsed into a thoughtful silence, and her
movements were beginning to show a troubled discomfort. Finally Richards
got up and strode aimlessly about the room, ploughing his hands through
his hair, much as a somnambulist might do who was having a bad dream.
Then he seemed to arrive at a definite purpose; and without a word he put
on his hat and passed quickly out of the house. His wife sat brooding,
with a drawn face, and did not seem to be aware that she was alone. Now
and then she murmured, "Lead us not into t . . . but--but--we are so
poor, so poor! . . . Lead us not into . . . Ah, who would be hurt by
it?--and no one would ever know . . . Lead us. . . ." The voice died out
in mumblings. After a little she glanced up and muttered in a
half-frightened, half-glad way--
She turned the light low, and slipped stealthily over and knelt down by
the sack and felt of its ridgy sides with her hands, and fondled them
lovingly; and there was a gloating light in her poor old eyes. She fell
into fits of absence; and came half out of them at times to mutter "If we
had only waited!--oh, if we had only waited a little, and not been in
such a hurry!"
Meantime Cox had gone home from his office and told his wife all about
the strange thing that had happened, and they had talked it over eagerly,
and guessed that the late Goodson was the only man in the town who could
have helped a suffering stranger with so noble a sum as twenty dollars.
Then there was a pause, and the two became thoughtful and silent. And
by-and-by nervous and fidgety. At last the wife said, as if to herself,
The husband came out of his thinkings with a slight start, and gazed
wistfully at his wife, whose face was become very pale; then he
hesitatingly rose, and glanced furtively at his hat, then at his wife--a
sort of mute inquiry. Mrs. Cox swallowed once or twice, with her hand at
her throat, then in place of speech she nodded her head. In a moment she
was alone, and mumbling to herself.
And now Richards and Cox were hurrying through the deserted streets, from
opposite directions. They met, panting, at the foot of the
printing-office stairs; by the night-light there they read each other's
face. Cox whispered:
The men were starting up-stairs; at this moment they were overtaken by a
boy, and Cox asked,
"Yes, sir."
"You needn't ship the early mail--nor ANY mail; wait till I tell you."
"Yes, sir. Time-table for Brixton and all the towns beyond changed
to-day, sir--had to get the papers in twenty minutes earlier than common.
I had to rush; if I had been two minutes later--"
The men turned and walked slowly away, not waiting to hear the rest.
Neither of them spoke during ten minutes; then Cox said, in a vexed tone,
"I see it now, but somehow I never thought, you know, until it was too
late. But the next time--"
"If you had only waited, Edward--if you had only stopped to think; but
no, you must run straight to the printing-office and spread it all over
the world."
"Why, yes--yes, it is true; but when I thought what a stir it would make,
and what a compliment it was to Hadleyburg that a stranger should trust
it so--"
"Oh, certainly, I know all that; but if you had only stopped to think,
you would have seen that you COULDN'T find the right man, because he is
in his grave, and hasn't left chick nor child nor relation behind him;
and as long as the money went to somebody that awfully needed it, and
nobody would be hurt by it, and--and--"
She broke down, crying. Her husband tried to think of some comforting
thing to say, and presently came out with this:
"But after all, Mary, it must be for the best--it must be; we know that.
And we must remember that it was so ordered--"
"Ordered! Oh, everything's ORDERED, when a person has to find some way
out when he has been stupid. Just the same, it was ORDERED that the money
should come to us in this special way, and it was you that must take it
on yourself to go meddling with the designs of Providence--and who gave
you the right? It was wicked, that is what it was--just blasphemous
presumption, and no more becoming to a meek and humble professor of--"
"But, Mary, you know how we have been trained all our lives long, like
the whole village, till it is absolutely second nature to us to stop not
a single moment to think when there's an honest thing to be done--"
"Oh, I know it, I know it--it's been one everlasting training and
training and training in honesty--honesty shielded, from the very cradle,
against every possible temptation, and so it's ARTIFICIAL honesty, and
weak as water when temptation comes, as we have seen this night. God
knows I never had shade nor shadow of a doubt of my petrified and
indestructible honesty until now--and now, under the very first big and
real temptation, I--Edward, it is my belief that this town's honesty is
as rotten as mine is; as rotten as yours. It is a mean town, a hard,
stingy town, and hasn't a virtue in the world but this honesty it is so
celebrated for and so conceited about; and so help me, I do believe that
if ever the day comes that its honesty falls under great temptation, its
grand reputation will go to ruin like a house of cards. There, now, I've
made confession, and I feel better; I am a humbug, and I've been one all
my life, without knowing it. Let no man call me honest again--I will not
have it."
"I--Well, Mary, I feel a good deal as you do: I certainly do. It seems
strange, too, so strange. I never could have believed it--never."
A long silence followed; both were sunk in thought. At last the wife
looked up and said:
"You were thinking, if a body could only guess out WHAT THE REMARK WAS
that Goodson made to the stranger."
"I'm past it. Let us make a pallet here; we've got to stand watch till
the bank vault opens in the morning and admits the sack. . . Oh dear, oh
dear--if we hadn't made the mistake!"
"The open sesame--what could it have been? I do wonder what that remark
could have been. But come; we will get to bed now."
"And sleep?"
"No; think."
"Yes; think."
By this time the Coxes too had completed their spat and their
reconciliation, and were turning in--to think, to think, and toss, and
fret, and worry over what the remark could possibly have been which
Goodson made to the stranded derelict; that golden remark; that remark
worth forty thousand dollars, cash.
The reason that the village telegraph-office was open later than usual
that night was this: The foreman of Cox's paper was the local
representative of the Associated Press. One might say its honorary
representative, for it wasn't four times a year that he could furnish
thirty words that would be accepted. But this time it was different.
His despatch stating what he had caught got an instant answer:
A colossal order! The foreman filled the bill; and he was the proudest
man in the State. By breakfast-time the next morning the name of
Hadleyburg the Incorruptible was on every lip in America, from Montreal
to the Gulf, from the glaciers of Alaska to the orange-groves of Florida;
and millions and millions of people were discussing the stranger and his
money-sack, and wondering if the right man would be found, and hoping
some more news about the matter would come soon--right away.
II
By the end of a week things had quieted down again; the wild intoxication
of pride and joy had sobered to a soft, sweet, silent delight--a sort of
deep, nameless, unutterable content. All faces bore a look of peaceful,
holy happiness.
At this stage--or at about this stage--a saying like this was dropped at
bedtime--with a sigh, usually--by the head of each of the nineteen
principal households:
"Ah, what COULD have been the remark that Goodson made?"
"Oh, DON'T! What horrible thing are you mulling in your mind? Put it
away from you, for God's sake!"
But that question was wrung from those men again the next night--and got
the same retort. But weaker.
And the third night the men uttered the question yet again--with anguish,
and absently. This time--and the following night--the wives fidgeted
feebly, and tried to say something. But didn't.
And the night after that they found their tongues and responded
--longingly:
Halliday's comments grew daily more and more sparklingly disagreeable and
disparaging. He went diligently about, laughing at the town,
individually and in mass. But his laugh was the only one left in the
village: it fell upon a hollow and mournful vacancy and emptiness. Not
even a smile was findable anywhere. Halliday carried a cigar-box around
on a tripod, playing that it was a camera, and halted all passers and
aimed the thing and said "Ready!--now look pleasant, please," but not
even this capital joke could surprise the dreary faces into any
softening.
So three weeks passed--one week was left. It was Saturday evening after
supper. Instead of the aforetime Saturday-evening flutter and bustle and
shopping and larking, the streets were empty and desolate. Richards and
his old wife sat apart in their little parlour--miserable and thinking.
This was become their evening habit now: the life-long habit which had
preceded it, of reading, knitting, and contented chat, or receiving or
paying neighbourly calls, was dead and gone and forgotten, ages ago--two
or three weeks ago; nobody talked now, nobody read, nobody visited--the
whole village sat at home, sighing, worrying, silent. Trying to guess
out that remark.
He did. He devoured it, his brain reeling. The letter was from a
distant State, and it said:
"HOWARD L. STEPHENSON."
It was a happy half-hour that the couple spent there on the settee
caressing each other; it was the old days come again--days that had begun
with their courtship and lasted without a break till the stranger brought
the deadly money. By-and-by the wife said:
"Oh, Edward, how lucky it was you did him that grand service, poor
Goodson! I never liked him, but I love him now. And it was fine and
beautiful of you never to mention it or brag about it." Then, with a
touch of reproach, "But you ought to have told ME, Edward, you ought to
have told your wife, you know."
"Now stop hemming and hawing, and tell me about it, Edward. I always
loved you, and now I'm proud of you. Everybody believes there was only
one good generous soul in this village, and now it turns out that
you--Edward, why don't you tell me?"
She was troubled and silent for a moment, then she laid her hand within
his and said:
"No . . . no. We have wandered far enough from our bearings--God spare
us that! In all your life you have never uttered a lie. But now--now
that the foundations of things seem to be crumbling from under us,
we--we--" She lost her voice for a moment, then said, brokenly, "Lead us
not into temptation. . . I think you made the promise, Edward. Let it
rest so. Let us keep away from that ground. Now--that is all gone by;
let us be happy again; it is no time for clouds."
The couple lay awake the most of the night, Mary happy and busy, Edward
busy, but not so happy. Mary was planning what she would do with the
money. Edward was trying to recall that service. At first his
conscience was sore on account of the lie he had told Mary--if it was a
lie. After much reflection--suppose it WAS a lie? What then? Was it
such a great matter? Aren't we always ACTING lies? Then why not tell
them? Look at Mary--look what she had done. While he was hurrying off on
his honest errand, what was she doing? Lamenting because the papers
hadn't been destroyed and the money kept. Is theft better than lying?
THAT point lost its sting--the lie dropped into the background and left
comfort behind it. The next point came to the front: HAD he rendered
that service? Well, here was Goodson's own evidence as reported in
Stephenson's letter; there could be no better evidence than that--it was
even PROOF that he had rendered it. Of course. So that point was
settled. . . No, not quite. He recalled with a wince that this unknown
Mr. Stephenson was just a trifle unsure as to whether the performer of it
was Richards or some other--and, oh dear, he had put Richards on his
honour! He must himself decide whither that money must go--and Mr.
Stephenson was not doubting that if he was the wrong man he would go
honourably and find the right one. Oh, it was odious to put a man in
such a situation--ah, why couldn't Stephenson have left out that doubt?
What did he want to intrude that for?
He was feeling reasonably comfortable now, but there was still one other
detail that kept pushing itself on his notice: of course he had done
that service--that was settled; but what WAS that service? He must recall
it--he would not go to sleep till he had recalled it; it would make his
peace of mind perfect. And so he thought and thought. He thought of a
dozen things--possible services, even probable services--but none of them
seemed adequate, none of them seemed large enough, none of them seemed
worth the money--worth the fortune Goodson had wished he could leave in
his will. And besides, he couldn't remember having done them, anyway.
Now, then--now, then--what KIND of a service would it be that would make
a man so inordinately grateful? Ah--the saving of his soul! That must
be it. Yes, he could remember, now, how he once set himself the task of
converting Goodson, and laboured at it as much as--he was going to say
three months; but upon closer examination it shrunk to a month, then to a
week, then to a day, then to nothing. Yes, he remembered now, and with
unwelcome vividness, that Goodson had told him to go to thunder and mind
his own business--HE wasn't hankering to follow Hadleyburg to heaven!
So that solution was a failure--he hadn't saved Goodson's soul. Richards
was discouraged. Then after a little came another idea: had he saved
Goodson's property? No, that wouldn't do--he hadn't any. His life?
That is it! Of course. Why, he might have thought of it before. This
time he was on the right track, sure. His imagination-mill was hard at
work in a minute, now.
Ah--THERE was a point which he had been overlooking from the start: it
had to be a service which he had rendered "possibly without knowing the
full value of it." Why, really, that ought to be an easy hunt--much
easier than those others. And sure enough, by-and-by he found it.
Goodson, years and years ago, came near marrying a very sweet and pretty
girl, named Nancy Hewitt, but in some way or other the match had been
broken off; the girl died, Goodson remained a bachelor, and by-and-by
became a soured one and a frank despiser of the human species. Soon
after the girl's death the village found out, or thought it had found
out, that she carried a spoonful of negro blood in her veins. Richards
worked at these details a good while, and in the end he thought he
remembered things concerning them which must have gotten mislaid in his
memory through long neglect. He seemed to dimly remember that it was HE
that found out about the negro blood; that it was he that told the
village; that the village told Goodson where they got it; that he thus
saved Goodson from marrying the tainted girl; that he had done him this
great service "without knowing the full value of it," in fact without
knowing that he WAS doing it; but that Goodson knew the value of it, and
what a narrow escape he had had, and so went to his grave grateful to his
benefactor and wishing he had a fortune to leave him. It was all clear
and simple, now, and the more he went over it the more luminous and
certain it grew; and at last, when he nestled to sleep, satisfied and
happy, he remembered the whole thing just as if it had been yesterday.
In fact, he dimly remembered Goodson's TELLING him his gratitude once.
Meantime Mary had spent six thousand dollars on a new house for herself
and a pair of slippers for her pastor, and then had fallen peacefully to
rest.
That same Saturday evening the postman had delivered a letter to each of
the other principal citizens--nineteen letters in all. No two of the
envelopes were alike, and no two of the superscriptions were in the same
hand, but the letters inside were just like each other in every detail
but one. They were exact copies of the letter received by
Richards--handwriting and all--and were all signed by Stephenson, but in
place of Richards's name each receiver's own name appeared.
All night long eighteen principal citizens did what their caste-brother
Richards was doing at the same time--they put in their energies trying to
remember what notable service it was that they had unconsciously done
Barclay Goodson. In no case was it a holiday job; still they succeeded.
And while they were at this work, which was difficult, their wives put in
the night spending the money, which was easy. During that one night the
nineteen wives spent an average of seven thousand dollars each out of the
forty thousand in the sack--a hundred and thirty-three thousand
altogether.
Next day there was a surprise for Jack Halliday. He noticed that the
faces of the nineteen chief citizens and their wives bore that expression
of peaceful and holy happiness again. He could not understand it,
neither was he able to invent any remarks about it that could damage it
or disturb it. And so it was his turn to be dissatisfied with life. His
private guesses at the reasons for the happiness failed in all instances,
upon examination. When he met Mrs. Wilcox and noticed the placid ecstasy
in her face, he said to himself, "Her cat has had kittens"--and went and
asked the cook; it was not so, the cook had detected the happiness, but
did not know the cause. When Halliday found the duplicate ecstasy in the
face of "Shadbelly" Billson (village nickname), he was sure some
neighbour of Billson's had broken his leg, but inquiry showed that this
had not happened. The subdued ecstasy in Gregory Yates's face could mean
but one thing--he was a mother-in-law short; it was another mistake.
"And Pinkerton--Pinkerton--he has collected ten cents that he thought he
was going to lose." And so on, and so on. In some cases the guesses had
to remain in doubt, in the others they proved distinct errors. In the
end Halliday said to himself, "Anyway it roots up that there's nineteen
Hadleyburg families temporarily in heaven: I don't know how it happened;
I only know Providence is off duty to-day."
An architect and builder from the next State had lately ventured to set
up a small business in this unpromising village, and his sign had now
been hanging out a week. Not a customer yet; he was a discouraged man,
and sorry he had come. But his weather changed suddenly now. First one
and then another chief citizen's wife said to him privately:
"Come to my house Monday week--but say nothing about it for the present.
We think of building."
He got eleven invitations that day. That night he wrote his daughter and
broke off her match with her student. He said she could marry a mile
higher than that.
Pinkerton the banker and two or three other well-to-do men planned
country-seats--but waited. That kind don't count their chickens until
they are hatched.
The Wilsons devised a grand new thing--a fancy-dress ball. They made no
actual promises, but told all their acquaintanceship in confidence that
they were thinking the matter over and thought they should give it--"and
if we do, you will be invited, of course." People were surprised, and
said, one to another, "Why, they are crazy, those poor Wilsons, they
can't afford it." Several among the nineteen said privately to their
husbands, "It is a good idea, we will keep still till their cheap thing
is over, then WE will give one that will make it sick."
The days drifted along, and the bill of future squanderings rose higher
and higher, wilder and wilder, more and more foolish and reckless. It
began to look as if every member of the nineteen would not only spend his
whole forty thousand dollars before receiving-day, but be actually in
debt by the time he got the money. In some cases light-headed people did
not stop with planning to spend, they really spent--on credit. They
bought land, mortgages, farms, speculative stocks, fine clothes, horses,
and various other things, paid down the bonus, and made themselves liable
for the rest--at ten days. Presently the sober second thought came, and
Halliday noticed that a ghastly anxiety was beginning to show up in a
good many faces. Again he was puzzled, and didn't know what to make of
it. "The Wilcox kittens aren't dead, for they weren't born; nobody's
broken a leg; there's no shrinkage in mother-in-laws; NOTHING has
happened--it is an insolvable mystery."
There was another puzzled man, too--the Rev. Mr. Burgess. For days,
wherever he went, people seemed to follow him or to be watching out for
him; and if he ever found himself in a retired spot, a member of the
nineteen would be sure to appear, thrust an envelope privately into his
hand, whisper "To be opened at the town-hall Friday evening," then vanish
away like a guilty thing. He was expecting that there might be one
claimant for the sack--doubtful, however, Goodson being dead--but it
never occurred to him that all this crowd might be claimants. When the
great Friday came at last, he found that he had nineteen envelopes.
III
The town-hall had never looked finer. The platform at the end of it was
backed by a showy draping of flags; at intervals along the walls were
festoons of flags; the gallery fronts were clothed in flags; the
supporting columns were swathed in flags; all this was to impress the
stranger, for he would be there in considerable force, and in a large
degree he would be connected with the press. The house was full. The
412 fixed seats were occupied; also the 68 extra chairs which had been
packed into the aisles; the steps of the platform were occupied; some
distinguished strangers were given seats on the platform; at the
horseshoe of tables which fenced the front and sides of the platform sat
a strong force of special correspondents who had come from everywhere.
It was the best-dressed house the town had ever produced. There were
some tolerably expensive toilets there, and in several cases the ladies
who wore them had the look of being unfamiliar with that kind of clothes.
At least the town thought they had that look, but the notion could have
arisen from the town's knowledge of the fact that these ladies had never
inhabited such clothes before.
The gold-sack stood on a little table at the front of the platform where
all the house could see it. The bulk of the house gazed at it with a
burning interest, a mouth-watering interest, a wistful and pathetic
interest; a minority of nineteen couples gazed at it tenderly, lovingly,
proprietarily, and the male half of this minority kept saying over to
themselves the moving little impromptu speeches of thankfulness for the
audience's applause and congratulations which they were presently going
to get up and deliver. Every now and then one of these got a piece of
paper out of his vest pocket and privately glanced at it to refresh his
memory.
Of course there was a buzz of conversation going on--there always is; but
at last, when the Rev. Mr. Burgess rose and laid his hand on the sack, he
could hear his microbes gnaw, the place was so still. He related the
curious history of the sack, then went on to speak in warm terms of
Hadleyburg's old and well-earned reputation for spotless honesty, and of
the town's just pride in this reputation. He said that this reputation
was a treasure of priceless value; that under Providence its value had
now become inestimably enhanced, for the recent episode had spread this
fame far and wide, and thus had focussed the eyes of the American world
upon this village, and made its name for all time, as he hoped and
believed, a synonym for commercial incorruptibility. [Applause.] "And
who is to be the guardian of this noble fame--the community as a whole?
No! The responsibility is individual, not communal. From this day forth
each and every one of you is in his own person its special guardian, and
individually responsible that no harm shall come to it. Do you--does
each of you--accept this great trust? [Tumultuous assent.] Then all is
well. Transmit it to your children and to your children's children.
To-day your purity is beyond reproach--see to it that it shall remain so.
To-day there is not a person in your community who could be beguiled to
touch a penny not his own--see to it that you abide in this grace. ["We
will! we will!"] This is not the place to make comparisons between
ourselves and other communities--some of them ungracious towards us; they
have their ways, we have ours; let us be content. [Applause.] I am
done. Under my hand, my friends, rests a stranger's eloquent recognition
of what we are; through him the world will always henceforth know what we
are. We do not know who he is, but in your name I utter your gratitude,
and ask you to raise your voices in indorsement."
The house rose in a body and made the walls quake with the thunders of
its thankfulness for the space of a long minute. Then it sat down, and
Mr. Burgess took an envelope out of his pocket. The house held its
breath while he slit the envelope open and took from it a slip of paper.
He read its contents--slowly and impressively--the audience listening
with tranced attention to this magic document, each of whose words stood
for an ingot of gold:
"'The remark which I made to the distressed stranger was this: "You are
very far from being a bad man; go, and reform."' Then he continued:--'We
shall know in a moment now whether the remark here quoted corresponds
with the one concealed in the sack; and if that shall prove to be so--and
it undoubtedly will--this sack of gold belongs to a fellow-citizen who
will henceforth stand before the nation as the symbol of the special
virtue which has made our town famous throughout the land--Mr. Billson!'"
The house had gotten itself all ready to burst into the proper tornado of
applause; but instead of doing it, it seemed stricken with a paralysis;
there was a deep hush for a moment or two, then a wave of whispered
murmurs swept the place--of about this tenor: "BILLSON! oh, come, this is
TOO thin! Twenty dollars to a stranger--or ANYBODY--BILLSON! Tell it
to the marines!" And now at this point the house caught its breath all
of a sudden in a new access of astonishment, for it discovered that
whereas in one part of the hall Deacon Billson was standing up with his
head weekly bowed, in another part of it Lawyer Wilson was doing the
same. There was a wondering silence now for a while. Everybody was
puzzled, and nineteen couples were surprised and indignant.
Billson and Wilson turned and stared at each other. Billson asked,
bitingly:
"Because I have a right to. Perhaps you will be good enough to explain
to the house why YOU rise."
"I ask the Chair to read the name signed to that paper."
That brought the Chair to itself, and it read out the name:
"There!" shouted Billson, "what have you got to say for yourself now?
And what kind of apology are you going to make to me and to this insulted
house for the imposture which you have attempted to play here?"
"No apologies are due, sir; and as for the rest of it, I publicly charge
you with pilfering my note from Mr. Burgess and substituting a copy of it
signed with your own name. There is no other way by which you could have
gotten hold of the test-remark; I alone, of living men, possessed the
secret of its wording."
"Let us not forget the proprieties due. There has evidently been a
mistake somewhere, but surely that is all. If Mr. Wilson gave me an
envelope--and I remember now that he did--I still have it."
He took one out of his pocket, opened it, glanced at it, looked surprised
and worried, and stood silent a few moments. Then he waved his hand in a
wandering and mechanical way, and made an effort or two to say something,
then gave it up, despondently. Several voices cried out:
"'The remark which I made to the unhappy stranger was this: "You are far
from being a bad man. [The house gazed at him marvelling.] Go, and
reform."'" [Murmurs: "Amazing! what can this mean?"] "This one," said
the Chair, "is signed Thurlow G. Wilson."
"There!" cried Wilson, "I reckon that settles it! I knew perfectly well
my note was purloined."
"Purloined!" retorted Billson. "I'll let you know that neither you nor
any man of your kidney must venture to--"
The Chair: "Order, gentlemen, order! Take your seats, both of you,
please."
They obeyed, shaking their heads and grumbling angrily. The house was
profoundly puzzled; it did not know what to do with this curious
emergency. Presently Thompson got up. Thompson was the hatter. He
would have liked to be a Nineteener; but such was not for him; his stock
of hats was not considerable enough for the position. He said:
The tanner got up and interrupted him. The tanner was a disgruntled man;
he believed himself entitled to be a Nineteener, but he couldn't get
recognition. It made him a little unpleasant in his ways and speech.
Said he:
The Tanner. "Mr. Chairman, one thing is now plain: one of these men has
been eavesdropping under the other one's bed, and filching family
secrets. If it is not unparliamentary to suggest it, I will remark that
both are equal to it. [The Chair. "Order! order!"] I withdraw the
remark, sir, and will confine myself to suggesting that IF one of them
has overheard the other reveal the test-remark to his wife, we shall
catch him now."
A Voice. "How?"
The Tanner. "Easily. The two have not quoted the remark in exactly the
same words. You would have noticed that, if there hadn't been a
considerable stretch of time and an exciting quarrel inserted between the
two readings."
The Tanner. "The word VERY is in Billson's note, and not in the other."
The Tanner. "And so, if the Chair will examine the test-remark in the
sack, we shall know which of these two frauds--[The Chair.
"Order!"]--which of these two adventurers--[The Chair. "Order!
order!"]--which of these two gentlemen--[laughter and applause]--is
entitled to wear the belt as being the first dishonest blatherskite ever
bred in this town--which he has dishonoured, and which will be a sultry
place for him from now out!" [Vigorous applause.]
Mr. Burgess made a slit in the sack, slid his hand in, and brought out an
envelope. In it were a couple of folded notes. He said:
"'I do not require that the first half of the remark which was made to me
by my benefactor shall be quoted with exactness, for it was not striking,
and could be forgotten; but its closing fifteen words are quite striking,
and I think easily rememberable; unless THESE shall be accurately
reproduced, let the applicant be regarded as an impostor. My benefactor
began by saying he seldom gave advice to anyone, but that it always bore
the hallmark of high value when he did give it. Then he said this--and
it has never faded from my memory: 'YOU ARE FAR FROM BEING A BAD MAN--'"
People jumped up and crowded around Wilson, wringing his hand and
congratulating fervently--meantime the Chair was hammering with the gavel
and shouting:
"'GO, AND REFORM--OR, MARK MY WORDS--SOME DAY, FOR YOUR SINS YOU WILL DIE
AND GO TO HELL OR HADLEYBURG--TRY AND MAKE IT THE FORMER.'"
Then the house let go, strangers and all. Even Mr. Burgess's gravity
broke down presently, then the audience considered itself officially
absolved from all restraint, and it made the most of its privilege. It
was a good long laugh, and a tempestuously wholehearted one, but it
ceased at last--long enough for Mr. Burgess to try to resume, and for the
people to get their eyes partially wiped; then it broke out again, and
afterward yet again; then at last Burgess was able to get out these
serious words:
"It is useless to try to disguise the fact--we find ourselves in the
presence of a matter of grave import. It involves the honour of your
town--it strikes at the town's good name. The difference of a single
word between the test-remarks offered by Mr. Wilson and Mr. Billson was
itself a serious thing, since it indicated that one or the other of these
gentlemen had committed a theft--"
The two men were sitting limp, nerveless, crushed; but at these words
both were electrified into movement, and started to get up.
"Sit down!" said the Chair, sharply, and they obeyed. "That, as I have
said, was a serious thing. And it was--but for only one of them. But
the matter has become graver; for the honour of BOTH is now in formidable
peril. Shall I go even further, and say in inextricable peril? BOTH
left out the crucial fifteen words." He paused. During several moments
he allowed the pervading stillness to gather and deepen its impressive
effects, then added: "There would seem to be but one way whereby this
could happen. I ask these gentlemen--Was there COLLUSION?--AGREEMENT?"
A low murmur sifted through the house; its import was, "He's got them
both."
"I ask the indulgence of the house while I explain this most painful
matter. I am sorry to say what I am about to say, since it must inflict
irreparable injury upon Mr. Billson, whom I have always esteemed and
respected until now, and in whose invulnerability to temptation I
entirely believed--as did you all. But for the preservation of my own
honour I must speak--and with frankness. I confess with shame--and I now
beseech your pardon for it--that I said to the ruined stranger all of the
words contained in the test-remark, including the disparaging fifteen.
[Sensation.] When the late publication was made I recalled them, and I
resolved to claim the sack of coin, for by every right I was entitled to
it. Now I will ask you to consider this point, and weigh it well; that
stranger's gratitude to me that night knew no bounds; he said himself
that he could find no words for it that were adequate, and that if he
should ever be able he would repay me a thousandfold. Now, then, I ask
you this; could I expect--could I believe--could I even remotely imagine
--that, feeling as he did, he would do so ungrateful a thing as to add
those quite unnecessary fifteen words to his test?--set a trap for
me?--expose me as a slanderer of my own town before my own people
assembled in a public hall? It was preposterous; it was impossible. His
test would contain only the kindly opening clause of my remark. Of that I
had no shadow of doubt. You would have thought as I did. You would not
have expected a base betrayal from one whom you had befriended and
against whom you had committed no offence. And so with perfect
confidence, perfect trust, I wrote on a piece of paper the opening
words--ending with "Go, and reform,"--and signed it. When I was about to
put it in an envelope I was called into my back office, and without
thinking I left the paper lying open on my desk." He stopped, turned his
head slowly toward Billson, waited a moment, then added: "I ask you to
note this; when I returned, a little latter, Mr. Billson was retiring by
my street door." [Sensation.]
The Chair. "Be seated, sir! Mr. Wilson has the floor."
Billson's friends pulled him into his seat and quieted him, and Wilson
went on:
"Those are the simple facts. My note was now lying in a different place
on the table from where I had left it. I noticed that, but attached no
importance to it, thinking a draught had blown it there. That Mr. Billson
would read a private paper was a thing which could not occur to me; he
was an honourable man, and he would be above that. If you will allow me
to say it, I think his extra word 'VERY' stands explained: it is
attributable to a defect of memory. I was the only man in the world who
could furnish here any detail of the test-mark--by HONOURABLE means. I
have finished."
At last there was a measurable degree of quiet, and the hatter said:
"But what is there to proceed with, sir, but to deliver the money?"
The Hatter. "I move three cheers for Mr. Wilson, Symbol of the special
virtue which--"
The cheers burst forth before he could finish; and in the midst of
them--and in the midst of the clamour of the gavel also--some enthusiasts
mounted Wilson on a big friend's shoulder and were going to fetch him in
triumph to the platform. The Chair's voice now rose above the noise:
The pandemonium of delight which turned itself loose now was of a sort to
make the judicious weep. Those whose withers were unwrung laughed till
the tears ran down; the reporters, in throes of laughter, set down
disordered pot-hooks which would never in the world be decipherable; and
a sleeping dog jumped up scared out of its wits, and barked itself crazy
at the turmoil. All manner of cries were scattered through the din:
"We're getting rich--TWO Symbols of Incorruptibility!--without counting
Billson!" "THREE!--count Shadbelly in--we can't have too many!" "All
right--Billson's elected!" "Alas, poor Wilson! victim of TWO thieves!"
The Chair [reading]. "'The remark which I made,' etc. 'You are far from
being a bad man. Go,' etc. Signed, 'Gregory Yates.'"
The house was in a roaring humour now, and ready to get all the fun out
of the occasion that might be in it. Several Nineteeners, looking pale
and distressed, got up and began to work their way towards the aisles,
but a score of shouts went up:
"The doors, the doors--close the doors; no Incorruptible shall leave this
place! Sit down, everybody!" The mandate was obeyed.
The Chair fished again, and once more the familiar words began to fall
from its lips--"'You are far from being a bad man--'"
"Name! name!"
"'Nicholas Whitworth.'"
Somebody wailed in, and began to sing this rhyme (leaving out "it's") to
the lovely "Mikado" tune of "When a man's afraid of a beautiful maid;"
the audience joined in, with joy; then, just in time, somebody
contributed another line--
The house roared that one too. As the last note died, Jack Halliday's
voice rose high and clear, freighted with a final line--
That was sung, with booming enthusiasm. Then the happy house started in
at the beginning and sang the four lines through twice, with immense
swing and dash, and finished up with a crashing three-times-three and a
tiger for "Hadleyburg the Incorruptible and all Symbols of it which we
shall find worthy to receive the hall-mark to-night."
Then the shoutings at the Chair began again, all over the place:
"Go on! go on! Read! read some more! Read all you've got!"
A dozen men got up now and began to protest. They said that this farce
was the work of some abandoned joker, and was an insult to the whole
community. Without a doubt these signatures were all forgeries--
"Sit down! sit down! Shut up! You are confessing. We'll find your
names in the lot."
"Together with those that have been already examined, there are
nineteen."
"Perhaps they all contain the secret. I move that you open them all and
read every signature that is attached to a note of that sort--and read
also the first eight words of the note."
It was put and carried--uproariously. Then poor old Richards got up, and
his wife rose and stood at his side. Her head was bent down, so that
none might see that she was crying. Her husband gave her his arm, and so
supporting her, he began to speak in a quavering voice:
"My friends, you have known us two--Mary and me--all our lives, and I
think you have liked us and respected us--"
"Allow me. It is quite true--that which you are saying, Mr. Richards;
this town DOES know you two; it DOES like you; it DOES respect you;
more--it honours you and LOVES you--"
The house rose in mass, faced toward the old couple eagerly, filled the
air with a snow-storm of waving handkerchiefs, and delivered the cheers
with all its affectionate heart.
"What I was going to say is this: We know your good heart, Mr. Richards,
but this is not a time for the exercise of charity toward offenders.
[Shouts of "Right! right!"] I see your generous purpose in your face,
but I cannot allow you to plead for these men--"
"Please take your seat, Mr. Richards. We must examine the rest of these
notes--simple fairness to the men who have already been exposed requires
this. As soon as that has been done--I give you my word for this--you
shall be heard."
The old couple sat reluctantly down, and the husband whispered to the
wife, "It is pitifully hard to have to wait; the shame will be greater
than ever when they find we were only going to plead for OURSELVES."
Straightway the jollity broke loose again with the reading of the names.
"'You are far from being a bad man--' Signature, 'Robert J. Titmarsh.'"
'"You are far from being a bad man--' Signature, 'Eliphalet Weeks.'"
"'You are far from being a bad man--' Signature, 'Oscar B. Wilder.'"
At this point the house lit upon the idea of taking the eight words out
of the Chairman's hands. He was not unthankful for that. Thenceforward
he held up each note in its turn and waited. The house droned out the
eight words in a massed and measured and musical deep volume of sound
(with a daringly close resemblance to a well-known church chant)--"You
are f-a-r from being a b-a-a-a-d man." Then the Chair said, "Signature,
'Archibald Wilcox.'" And so on, and so on, name after name, and
everybody had an increasingly and gloriously good time except the
wretched Nineteen. Now and then, when a particularly shining name was
called, the house made the Chair wait while it chanted the whole of the
test-remark from the beginning to the closing words, "And go to hell or
Hadleyburg--try and make it the for-or-m-e-r!" and in these special
cases they added a grand and agonised and imposing "A-a-a-a-MEN!"
The list dwindled, dwindled, dwindled, poor old Richards keeping tally of
the count, wincing when a name resembling his own was pronounced, and
waiting in miserable suspense for the time to come when it would be his
humiliating privilege to rise with Mary and finish his plea, which he was
intending to word thus: ". . . for until now we have never done any
wrong thing, but have gone our humble way unreproached. We are very
poor, we are old, and, have no chick nor child to help us; we were sorely
tempted, and we fell. It was my purpose when I got up before to make
confession and beg that my name might not be read out in this public
place, for it seemed to us that we could not bear it; but I was
prevented. It was just; it was our place to suffer with the rest. It
has been hard for us. It is the first time we have ever heard our name
fall from any one's lips--sullied. Be merciful--for the sake or the
better days; make our shame as light to bear as in your charity you can."
At this point in his reverie Mary nudged him, perceiving that his mind
was absent. The house was chanting, "You are f-a-r," etc.
"Be ready," Mary whispered. "Your name comes now; he has read eighteen."
"Next! next! next!" came volleying from all over the house.
Burgess put his hand into his pocket. The old couple, trembling, began
to rise. Burgess fumbled a moment, then said:
Faint with joy and surprise, the couple sank into their seats, and Mary
whispered:
"Oh, bless God, we are saved!--he has lost ours--I wouldn't give this for
a hundred of those sacks!"
The house burst out with its "Mikado" travesty, and sang it three times
with ever-increasing enthusiasm, rising to its feet when it reached for
the third time the closing line--
and finishing up with cheers and a tiger for "Hadleyburg purity and our
eighteen immortal representatives of it."
Then Wingate, the saddler, got up and proposed cheers "for the cleanest
man in town, the one solitary important citizen in it who didn't try to
steal that money--Edward Richards."
They were given with great and moving heartiness; then somebody proposed
that "Richards be elected sole Guardian and Symbol of the now Sacred
Hadleyburg Tradition, with power and right to stand up and look the whole
sarcastic world in the face."
Passed, by acclamation; then they sang the "Mikado" again, and ended it
with--
The Tanner (with bitter sarcasm). "That's easy. The money has to be
divided among the eighteen Incorruptibles. They gave the suffering
stranger twenty dollars apiece--and that remark--each in his turn--it
took twenty-two minutes for the procession to move past. Staked the
stranger--total contribution, $360. All they want is just the loan
back--and interest--forty thousand dollars altogether."
A Cyclone of Voices. "Open it! Open it! The Eighteen to the front!
Committee on Propagation of the Tradition! Forward--the Incorruptibles!"
The Chair ripped the sack wide, and gathered up a handful of bright,
broad, yellow coins, shook them together, then examined them.
There was a crashing outbreak of delight over this news, and when the
noise had subsided, the tanner called out:
Wilson [in a voice trembling with anger]. "You will allow me to say, and
without apologies for my language, DAMN the money!"
A Voice. "Seventeen Symbols left! Step up, gentlemen, and assume your
trust!"
The Saddler. "Mr. Chairman, we've got ONE clean man left, anyway, out of
the late aristocracy; and he needs money, and deserves it. I move that
you appoint Jack Halliday to get up there and auction off that sack of
gilt twenty-dollar pieces, and give the result to the right man--the man
whom Hadleyburg delights to honour--Edward Richards."
This was received with great enthusiasm, the dog taking a hand again; the
saddler started the bids at a dollar, the Brixton folk and Barnum's
representative fought hard for it, the people cheered every jump that the
bids made, the excitement climbed moment by moment higher and higher, the
bidders got on their mettle and grew steadily more and more daring, more
and more determined, the jumps went from a dollar up to five, then to
ten, then to twenty, then fifty, then to a hundred, then--
Edward fell--that is, he sat still; sat with a conscience which was not
satisfied, but which was overpowered by circumstances.
They sat down, and all the Symbols except "Dr." Clay Harkness got up,
violently protesting against the proposed outrage, and threatening to--
"I beg you not to threaten me," said the stranger calmly. "I know my
legal rights, and am not accustomed to being frightened at bluster."
[Applause.] He sat down. "Dr." Harkness saw an opportunity here. He
was one of the two very rich men of the place, and Pinkerton was the
other. Harkness was proprietor of a mint; that is to say, a popular
patent medicine. He was running for the Legislature on one ticket, and
Pinkerton on the other. It was a close race and a hot one, and getting
hotter every day. Both had strong appetites for money; each had bought a
great tract of land, with a purpose; there was going to be a new railway,
and each wanted to be in the Legislature and help locate the route to his
own advantage; a single vote might make the decision, and with it two or
three fortunes. The stake was large, and Harkness was a daring
speculator. He was sitting close to the stranger. He leaned over while
one or another of the other Symbols was entertaining the house with
protests and appeals, and asked, in a whisper,
"No."
"Twenty-five."
"No."
"Say thirty."
"All right, I'll give it. I will come to the hotel at ten in the
morning. I don't want it known; will see you privately."
"Very good." Then the stranger got up and said to the house:
"I find it late. The speeches of these gentlemen are not without merit,
not without interest, not without grace; yet if I may be excused I will
take my leave. I thank you for the great favour which you have shown me
in granting my petition. I ask the Chair to keep the sack for me until
to-morrow, and to hand these three five-hundred-dollar notes to Mr.
Richards." They were passed up to the Chair.
"At nine I will call for the sack, and at eleven will deliver the rest of
the ten thousand to Mr. Richards in person at his home. Good-night."
Then he slipped out, and left the audience making a vast noise, which was
composed of a mixture of cheers, the "Mikado" song, dog-disapproval, and
the chant, "You are f-a-r from being a b-a-a-d man--a-a-a a-men!"
IV
"Do you think we are to blame, Edward--MUCH to blame?" and her eyes
wandered to the accusing triplet of big bank-notes lying on the table,
where the congratulators had been gloating over them and reverently
fingering them. Edward did not answer at once; then he brought out a
sigh and said, hesitatingly:
"We--we couldn't help it, Mary. It--well it was ordered. ALL things
are."
Mary glanced up and looked at him steadily, but he didn't return the
look. Presently she said:
"I thought congratulations and praises always tasted good. But--it seems
to me, now--Edward?"
"Well?"
"N--no."
"Resign?"
"Before I was not afraid to let oceans of people's money pour through my
hands, but--Mary, I am so tired, so tired--"
At nine in the morning the stranger called for the sack and took it to
the hotel in a cab. At ten Harkness had a talk with him privately. The
stranger asked for and got five cheques on a metropolitan bank--drawn to
"Bearer,"--four for $1,500 each, and one for $34,000. He put one of the
former in his pocket-book, and the remainder, representing $38,500, he
put in an envelope, and with these he added a note which he wrote after
Harkness was gone. At eleven he called at the Richards' house and
knocked. Mrs. Richards peeped through the shutters, then went and
received the envelope, and the stranger disappeared without a word. She
came back flushed and a little unsteady on her legs, and gasped out:
"I am sure I recognised him! Last night it seemed to me that maybe I had
seen him somewhere before."
"Oh, Edward, it is TOO bad!" And she held up the cheques and began to
cry.
"Fan me, Mary, fan me! They are the same as gold!"
"And does it all come to us, do you think--instead of the ten thousand?"
"Why, it looks like it. And the cheques are made to 'Bearer,' too."
"A hint to collect them at some distant bank, I reckon. Perhaps Harkness
doesn't want the matter known. What is that--a note?"
"It seems written with fire--it burns so. Mary--I am miserable again."
"If those beautiful words were deserved, Mary--and God knows I believed I
deserved them once--I think I could give the forty thousand dollars for
them. And I would put that paper away, as representing more than gold
and jewels, and keep it always. But now--We could not live in the shadow
of its accusing presence, Mary."
"You saved me, in a difficult time. I saved you last night. It was at
cost of a lie, but I made the sacrifice freely, and out of a grateful
heart. None in this village knows so well as I know how brave and good
and noble you are. At bottom you cannot respect me, knowing as you do of
that matter of which I am accused, and by the general voice condemned;
but I beg that you will at least believe that I am a grateful man; it
will help me to bear my burden. [Signed] 'BURGESS.'"
"Saved, once more. And on such terms!" He put the note in the lire.
"I--I wish I were dead, Mary, I wish I were out of it all!"
"Oh, these are bitter, bitter days, Edward. The stabs, through their
very generosity, are so deep--and they come so fast!"
Three days before the election each of two thousand voters suddenly found
himself in possession of a prized memento--one of the renowned bogus
double-eagles. Around one of its faces was stamped these words: "THE
REMARK I MADE TO THE POOR STRANGER WAS--" Around the other face was
stamped these: "GO, AND REFORM. [SIGNED] PINKERTON." Thus the entire
remaining refuse of the renowned joke was emptied upon a single head, and
with calamitous effect. It revived the recent vast laugh and
concentrated it upon Pinkerton; and Harkness's election was a walk-over.
Within twenty-four hours after the Richardses had received their cheques
their consciences were quieting down, discouraged; the old couple were
learning to reconcile themselves to the sin which they had committed.
But they were to learn, now, that a sin takes on new and real terrors
when there seems a chance that it is going to be found out. This gives
it a fresh and most substantial and important aspect. At church the
morning sermon was of the usual pattern; it was the same old things said
in the same old way; they had heard them a thousand times and found them
innocuous, next to meaningless, and easy to sleep under; but now it was
different: the sermon seemed to bristle with accusations; it seemed
aimed straight and specially at people who were concealing deadly sins.
After church they got away from the mob of congratulators as soon as they
could, and hurried homeward, chilled to the bone at they did not know
what--vague, shadowy, indefinite fears. And by chance they caught a
glimpse of Mr. Burgess as he turned a corner. He paid no attention to
their nod of recognition! He hadn't seen it; but they did not know that.
What could his conduct mean? It might mean--it might--mean--oh, a dozen
dreadful things. Was it possible that he knew that Richards could have
cleared him of guilt in that bygone time, and had been silently waiting
for a chance to even up accounts? At home, in their distress they got to
imagining that their servant might have been in the next room listening
when Richards revealed the secret to his wife that he knew of Burgess's
innocence; next Richards began to imagine that he had heard the swish of
a gown in there at that time; next, he was sure he HAD heard it. They
would call Sarah in, on a pretext, and watch her face; if she had been
betraying them to Mr. Burgess, it would show in her manner. They asked
her some questions--questions which were so random and incoherent and
seemingly purposeless that the girl felt sure that the old people's minds
had been affected by their sudden good fortune; the sharp and watchful
gaze which they bent upon her frightened her, and that completed the
business. She blushed, she became nervous and confused, and to the old
people these were plain signs of guilt--guilt of some fearful sort or
other--without doubt she was a spy and a traitor. When they were alone
again they began to piece many unrelated things together and get horrible
results out of the combination. When things had got about to the worst
Richards was delivered of a sudden gasp and his wife asked:
"Oh, it is dreadful--I know what you are going to say--he didn't return
your transcript of the pretended test-remark."
In the night the doctor was called. The news went around in the morning
that the old couple were rather seriously ill--prostrated by the
exhausting excitement growing out of their great windfall, the
congratulations, and the late hours, the doctor said. The town was
sincerely distressed; for these old people were about all it had left to
be proud of, now.
Two days later the news was worse. The old couple were delirious, and
were doing strange things. By witness of the nurses, Richards had
exhibited cheques--for $8,500? No--for an amazing sum--$38,500! What
could be the explanation of this gigantic piece of luck?
The following day the nurses had more news--and wonderful. They had
concluded to hide the cheques, lest harm come to them; but when they
searched they were gone from under the patient's pillow--vanished away.
The patient said:
"You will never see them again--they are destroyed. They came from
Satan. I saw the hell-brand on them, and I knew they were sent to betray
me to sin." Then he fell to gabbling strange and dreadful things which
were not clearly understandable, and which the doctor admonished them to
keep to themselves.
A nurse must have talked in her sleep, for within two days the forbidden
gabblings were the property of the town; and they were of a surprising
sort. They seemed to indicate that Richards had been a claimant for the
sack himself, and that Burgess had concealed that fact and then
maliciously betrayed it.
Burgess was taxed with this and stoutly denied it. And he said it was
not fair to attach weight to the chatter of a sick old man who was out of
his mind. Still, suspicion was in the air, and there was much talk.
Six days passed, then came more news. The old couple were dying.
Richards's mind cleared in his latest hour, and he sent for Burgess.
Burgess said:
"No!" said Richards; "I want witnesses. I want you all to hear my
confession, so that I may die a man, and not a dog. I was clean
--artificially--like the rest; and like the rest I fell when temptation
came. I signed a lie, and claimed the miserable sack. Mr. Burgess
remembered that I had done him a service, and in gratitude (and
ignorance) he suppressed my claim and saved me. You know the thing that
was charged against Burgess years ago. My testimony, and mine alone,
could have cleared him, and I was a coward and left him to suffer
disgrace--"
Burgess's impassioned protestations fell upon deaf ears; the dying man
passed away without knowing that once more he had done poor Burgess a
wrong. The old wife died that night.
The last of the sacred Nineteen had fallen a prey to the fiendish sack;
the town was stripped of the last rag of its ancient glory. Its mourning
was not showy, but it was deep.
By act of the Legislature--upon prayer and petition--Hadleyburg was
allowed to change its name to (never mind what--I will not give it away),
and leave one word out of the motto that for many generations had graced
the town's official seal.
It is an honest town once more, and the man will have to rise early that
catches it napping again.
As I understand it, what you desire is information about 'my first lie,
and how I got out of it.' I was born in 1835; I am well along, and my
memory is not as good as it was. If you had asked about my first truth
it would have been easier for me and kinder of you, for I remember that
fairly well. I remember it as if it were last week. The family think it
was week before, but that is flattery and probably has a selfish project
back of it. When a person has become seasoned by experience and has
reached the age of sixty-four, which is the age of discretion, he likes a
family compliment as well as ever, but he does not lose his head over it
as in the old innocent days.
It was human nature to want to get these riches, and I fell. I lied
about the pin--advertising one when there wasn't any. You would have
done it; George Washington did it, anybody would have done it. During
the first half of my life I never knew a child that was able to rise
about that temptation and keep from telling that lie. Up to 1867 all the
civilised children that were ever born into the world were liars
--including George. Then the safety-pin came in and blocked the game. But
is that reform worth anything? No; for it is reform by force and has no
virtue in it; it merely stops that form of lying, it doesn't impair the
disposition to lie, by a shade. It is the cradle application of
conversion by fire and sword, or of the temperance principle through
prohibition.
To return to that early lie. They found no pin and they realised that
another liar had been added to the world's supply. For by grace of a
rare inspiration a quite commonplace but seldom noticed fact was borne in
upon their understandings--that almost all lies are acts, and speech has
no part in them. Then, if they examined a little further they recognised
that all people are liars from the cradle onwards, without exception, and
that they begin to lie as soon as they wake in the morning, and keep it
up without rest or refreshment until they go to sleep at night. If they
arrived at that truth it probably grieved them--did, if they had been
heedlessly and ignorantly educated by their books and teachers; for why
should a person grieve over a thing which by the eternal law of his make
he cannot help? He didn't invent the law; it is merely his business to
obey it and keep still; join the universal conspiracy and keep so still
that he shall deceive his fellow-conspirators into imagining that he
doesn't know that the law exists. It is what we all do--we that know. I
am speaking of the lie of silent assertion; we can tell it without saying
a word, and we all do it--we that know. In the magnitude of its
territorial spread it is one of the most majestic lies that the
civilisations make it their sacred and anxious care to guard and watch
and propagate.
From the beginning of the Dreyfus case to the end of it all France,
except a couple of dozen moral paladins, lay under the smother of the
silent-assertion lie that no wrong was being done to a persecuted and
unoffending man. The like smother was over England lately, a good half
of the population silently letting on that they were not aware that Mr.
Chamberlain was trying to manufacture a war in South Africa and was
willing to pay fancy prices for the materials.
Here in England they have the oddest ways. They won't tell a spoken lie
--nothing can persuade them. Except in a large moral interest, like
politics or religion, I mean. To tell a spoken lie to get even the
poorest little personal advantage out of it is a thing which is
impossible to them. They make me ashamed of myself sometimes, they are
so bigoted. They will not even tell a lie for the fun of it; they will
not tell it when it hasn't even a suggestion of damage or advantage in
it for any one. This has a restraining influence upon me in spite of
reason, and I am always getting out of practice.
Of course, they tell all sorts of little unspoken lies, just like
anybody; but they don't notice it until their attention is called to it.
They have got me so that sometimes I never tell a verbal lie now except
in a modified form; and even in the modified form they don't approve of
it. Still, that is as far as I can go in the interest of the growing
friendly relations between the two countries; I must keep some of my
self-respect--and my health. I can live on a pretty low diet, but I
can't get along on no sustenance at all.
Of course, there are times when these people have to come out with a
spoken lie, for that is a thing which happens to everybody once in a
while, and would happen to the angels if they came down here much.
Particularly to the angels, in fact, for the lies I speak of are
self-sacrificing ones told for a generous object, not a mean one; but
even when these people tell a lie of that sort it seems to scare them
and unsettle their minds. It is a wonderful thing to see, and shows
that they are all insane. In fact, it is a country which is full of
the most interesting superstitions.
My friend struggled with the case several minutes, turning it over and
examining it in his mind, then he said that so far as he could see the
modification was itself a lie, it being a misleading reservation of an
explanatory fact, and so I had told two lies instead of only one.
'I wouldn't have done it,' said he; 'I have never told a lie, and I
should be very sorry to do such a thing.'
Just then he lifted his hat and smiled a basketful of surprised and
delighted smiles down at a gentleman who was passing in a hansom.
'Well, your heart was right, G---, and your act was right. What you did
was kindly and courteous and beautiful; I would have done it myself; but
it was a lie.'
'I know you didn't speak, still you said to him very plainly and
enthusiastically in dumb show, "Hello! you in town? Awful glad to see
you, old fellow; when did you get back?" Concealed in your actions was
what you have called "a misleading reservation of an explanatory fact"
--the act that you had never seen him before. You expressed joy in
encountering him--a lie; and you made that reservation--another lie. It
was my pair over again. But don't be troubled--we all do it.'
Two hours later, at dinner, when quite other matters were being
discussed, he told how he happened along once just in the nick of time to
do a great service for a family who were old friends of his. The head of
it had suddenly died in circumstances and surroundings of a ruinously
disgraceful character. If know the facts would break the hearts of the
innocent family and put upon them a load of unendurable shame. There was
no help but in a giant lie, and he girded up his loins and told it.
'Never. In all these years they have never suspected. They were proud
of him and had always reason to be; they are proud of him yet, and to
them his memory is sacred and stainless and beautiful.'
'For the very next man that came along might have been one of these
heartless and shameless truth-mongers. You have told the truth a million
times in your life, G---, but that one golden lie atones for it all.
Persevere.'
Some may think me not strict enough in my morals, but that position is
hardly tenable. There are many kinds of lying which I do not approve. I
do not like an injurious lie, except when it injures somebody else; and I
do not like the lie of bravado, nor the lie of virtuous ecstasy; the
latter was affected by Bryant, the former by Carlyle.
Mr. Bryant said, 'Truth crushed to earth will rise again.' I have taken
medals at thirteen world's fairs, and may claim to be not without
capacity, but I never told as big a one as that. Mr. Bryant was playing
to the gallery; we all do it. Carlyle said, in substance, this--I do not
remember the exact words: 'This gospel is eternal--that a lie shall not
live.' I have a reverent affection for Carlyle's books, and have read
his 'Revelation' eight times; and so I prefer to think he was not
entirely at himself when he told that one. To me it is plain that he
said it in a moment of excitement, when chasing Americans out of his
back-yard with brickbats. They used to go there and worship. At bottom
he was probably fond of it, but he was always able to conceal it. He
kept bricks for them, but he was not a good shot, and it is matter of
history that when he fired they dodged, and carried off the brick; for as
a nation we like relics, and so long as we get them we do not much care
what the reliquary thinks about it. I am quite sure that when he told
that large one about a lie not being able to live he had just missed an
American and was over excited. He told it above thirty years ago, but it
is alive yet; alive, and very healthy and hearty, and likely to outlive
any fact in history. Carlyle was truthful when calm, but give him
Americans enough and bricks enough and he could have taken medals
himself.
As regards that time that George Washington told the truth, a word must
be said, of course. It is the principal jewel in the crown of America,
and it is but natural that we should work it for all it is worth, as
Milton says in his 'Lay of the Last Minstrel.' It was a timely and
judicious truth, and I should have told it myself in the circumstances.
But I should have stopped there. It was a stately truth, a lofty truth
--a Tower; and I think it was a mistake to go on and distract attention
from its sublimity by building another Tower alongside of it fourteen
times as high. I refer to his remark that he 'could not lie.' I should
have fed that to the marines; or left it to Carlyle; it is just in his
style. It would have taken a medal at any European fair, and would have
got an honourable mention even at Chicago if it had been saved up. But
let it pass; the Father of his Country was excited. I have been in those
circumstances, and I recollect.
And then--But I have wandered from my text. How did I get out of my
second lie? I think I got out with honour, but I cannot be sure, for it
was a long time ago and some of the details have faded out of my memory.
I recollect that I was reversed and stretched across some one's knee, and
that something happened, but I cannot now remember what it was. I think
there was music; but it is all dim now and blurred by the lapse of time,
and this may be only a senile fancy.
'Yes, I will tell you anything about my life that you would like to know,
Mr. Twain,' she said, in her soft voice, and letting her honest eyes rest
placidly upon my face, 'for it is kind and good of you to like me and
care to know about me.'
She had been absently scraping blubber-grease from her cheeks with a
small bone-knife and transferring it to her fur sleeve, while she watched
the Aurora Borealis swing its flaming streamers out of the sky and wash
the lonely snow plain and the templed icebergs with the rich hues of the
prism, a spectacle of almost intolerable splendour and beauty; but now
she shook off her reverie and prepared to give me the humble little
history I had asked for. She settled herself comfortably on the block of
ice which we were using as a sofa, and I made ready to listen.
She was a beautiful creature. I speak from the Esquimaux point of view.
Others would have thought her a trifle over-plump. She was just twenty
years old, and was held to be by far the most bewitching girl in her
tribe. Even now, in the open air, with her cumbersome and shapeless fur
coat and trousers and boots and vast hood, the beauty of her face was at
least apparent; but her figure had to be taken on trust. Among all the
guests who came and went, I had seen no girl at her father's hospitable
trough who could be called her equal. Yet she was not spoiled. She was
sweet and natural and sincere, and if she was aware that she was a belle,
there was nothing about her ways to show that she possessed that
knowledge.
She had been my daily comrade for a week now, and the better I knew her
the better I liked her. She had been tenderly and carefully brought up,
in an atmosphere of singularly rare refinement for the polar regions, for
her father was the most important man of his tribe and ranked at the top
of Esquimaux civilisation. I made long dog-sledge trips across the
mighty ice floes with Lasca--that was her name--and found her company
always pleasant and her conversation agreeable. I went fishing with her,
but not in her perilous boat: I merely followed along on the ice and
watched her strike her game with her fatally accurate spear. We went
sealing together; several times I stood by while she and the family dug
blubber from a stranded whale, and once I went part of the way when she
was hunting a bear, but turned back before the finish, because at bottom
I am afraid of bears.
However, she was ready to begin her story, now, and this is what she
said:
'Our tribe had always been used to wander about from place to place over
the frozen seas, like the other tribes, but my father got tired of that,
two years ago, and built this great mansion of frozen snow-blocks--look
at it; it is seven feet high and three or four times as long as any of
the others--and here we have stayed ever since. He was very proud of his
house, and that was reasonable, for if you have examined it with care you
must have noticed how much finer and completer it is than houses usually
are. But if you have not, you must, for you will find it has luxurious
appointments that are quite beyond the common. For instance, in that end
of it which you have called the "parlour," the raised platform for the
accommodation of guests and the family at meals is the largest you have
ever seen in any house--is it not so?'
'Yes, you are quite right, Lasca; it is the largest; we have nothing
resembling it in even the finest houses in the United States.' This
admission made her eyes sparkle with pride and pleasure. I noted that,
and took my cue.
'I thought it must have surprised you,' she said. 'And another thing; it
is bedded far deeper in furs than is usual; all kinds of furs--seal,
sea-otter, silver-grey fox, bear, marten, sable--every kind of fur in
profusion; and the same with the ice-block sleeping-benches along the
walls which you call "beds." Are your platforms and sleeping-benches
better provided at home?'
'Indeed, they are not, Lasca--they do not begin to be.' That pleased her
again. All she was thinking of was the number of furs her aesthetic
father took the trouble to keep on hand, not their value. I could have
told her that those masses of rich furs constituted wealth--or would in
my country--but she would not have understood that; those were not the
kind of things that ranked as riches with her people. I could have told
her that the clothes she had on, or the every-day clothes of the
commonest person about her, were worth twelve or fifteen hundred dollars,
and that I was not acquainted with anybody at home who wore
twelve-hundred dollar toilets to go fishing in; but she would not have
understood it, so I said nothing. She resumed:
'And then the slop-tubs. We have two in the parlour, and two in the rest
of the house. It is very seldom that one has two in the parlour. Have
you two in the parlour at home?'
The memory of those tubs made me gasp, but I recovered myself before she
noticed, and said with effusion:
'Oh, but you cannot mean it, you cannot mean it!'
Her lovely eyes stood wide with amazement, and she said, slowly, and with
a sort of awe in her voice:
'Why, that humility is right enough,' said Lasca, 'if one does not carry
it too far--but what does the place look like?'
'I should think so! I never heard anything like it. Is it a fine house
--that is, otherwise?'
The girl was silent awhile, and sat dreamily gnawing a candle-end,
apparently trying to think the thing out. At last she gave her head a
little toss and spoke out her opinion with decision:
'Do the rich people, with you, have as good sleeping-benches as ours, and
made out of as nice broad ice-blocks?'
'Well, they are pretty good--good enough--but they are not made of
ice-blocks.'
'Well, it's because you don't know how to value it, you little provincial
muggings. If you had it in New York in midsummer, you could buy all the
whales in the market with it.'
This made her thoughtful. Presently she said, with a little sigh:
I had merely meant to furnish her a standard of values which she could
understand; but my purpose had miscarried. I had only given her the
impression that whales were cheap and plenty in New York, and set her
mouth to watering for them. It seemed best to try to mitigate the evil
which I had done, so I said:
'But you wouldn't care for whale-meat if you lived there. Nobody does.'
'What!'
'But pardon me. They had a prejudice against soap? Had?'--with falling
inflection.
'It was just a prejudice. The first time soap came here from the
foreigners, nobody liked it; but as soon as it got to be fashionable,
everybody liked it, and now everybody has it that can afford it. Are you
fond of it?'
'And fish-interiors!--'
'And train-oil--'
'And slush!--'
'And whale-blubber!--'
'And carrion! and sour-krout! and beeswax! and tar! and turpentine! and
molasses! and--'
But this vision of an ideal feast was too much for her, and she swooned
away, poor thing. I rubbed snow in her face and brought her to, and
after a while got her excitement cooled down. By-and-by she drifted into
her story again:
'So we began to live here in the fine house. But I was not happy. The
reason was this: I was born for love: for me there could be no true
happiness without it. I wanted to be loved for myself alone. I wanted
an idol, and I wanted to be my idol's idol; nothing less than mutual
idolatry would satisfy my fervent nature. I had suitors in plenty--in
over-plenty, indeed--but in each and every case they had a fatal defect:
sooner or later I discovered that defect--not one of them failed to
betray it--it was not me they wanted, but my wealth.'
'Your wealth?'
'Yes; for my father is much the richest man in this tribe--or in any
tribe in these regions.'
Then she sprang back dramatically, to observe the effect. I did my level
best not to disappoint her. I turned pale and murmured:
'Great Scott!'
'Well, it's all right, and I don't blame you any more, for you are young
and thoughtless, and of course you couldn't foresee what an effect--'
'You see, Lasca, if you had said five or six hooks, to start with, and
then gradually--'
'Oh, I see, I see--then gradually added one, and then two, and then--ah,
why couldn't I have thought of that!'
'Never mind, child, it's all right--I am better now--I shall be over it
in a little while. But--to spring the whole twenty-two on a person
unprepared and not very strong anyway--'
'Oh, it was a crime! But you forgive me--say you forgive me. Do!'
After harvesting a good deal of very pleasant coaxing and petting and
persuading, I forgave her and she was happy again, and by-and-by she got
under way with her narrative once more. I presently discovered that the
family treasury contained still another feature--a jewel of some sort,
apparently--and that she was trying to get around speaking squarely about
it, lest I get paralysed again. But I wanted to known about that thing,
too, and urged her to tell me what it was. She was afraid. But I
insisted, and said I would brace myself this time and be prepared, then
the shock would not hurt me. She was full of misgivings, but the
temptation to reveal that marvel to me and enjoy my astonishment and
admiration was too strong for her, and she confessed that she had it on
her person, and said that if I was sure I was prepared--and so on and so
on--and with that she reached into her bosom and brought out a battered
square of brass, watching my eye anxiously the while. I fell over
against her in a quite well-acted faint, which delighted her heart and
nearly frightened it out of her, too, at the same time. When I came to
and got calm, she was eager to know what I thought of her jewel.
'Do you really? How nice of you to say that! But it is a love, now isn't
it?'
'Well, I should say so! I'd rather own it than the equator.'
'I thought you would admire it,' she said. 'I think it is so lovely.
And there isn't another one in all these latitudes. People have come all
the way from the open Polar Sea to look at it. Did you ever see one
before?'
I said no, this was the first one I had ever seen. It cost me a pang to
tell that generous lie, for I had seen a million of them in my time, this
humble jewel of hers being nothing but a battered old New York Central
baggage check.
'Land!' said I, 'you don't go about with it on your person this way,
alone and with no protection, not even a dog?'
'Ssh! not so loud,' she said. 'Nobody knows I carry it with me. They
think it is in papa's treasury. That is where it generally is.'
It was a blunt question, and for a moment she looked startled and a
little suspicious, but I said:
'Oh, come, don't you be afraid about me. At home we have seventy
millions of people, and although I say it myself that shouldn't, there is
not one person among them all but would trust me with untold fish-hooks.'
This reassured her, and she told me where the hooks were hidden in the
house. Then she wandered from her course to brag a little about the size
of the sheets of transparent ice that formed the windows of the mansion,
and asked me if I had ever seen their like at home, and I came right out
frankly and confessed that I hadn't, which pleased her more than she
could find words to dress her gratification in. It was so easy to please
her, and such a pleasure to do it, that I went on and said--
'Ah, Lasca, you are a fortune girl!--this beautiful house, this dainty
jewel, that rich treasure, all this elegant snow, and sumptuous icebergs
and limitless sterility, and public bears and walruses, and noble freedom
and largeness and everybody's admiring eyes upon you, and everybody's
homage and respect at your command without the asking; young, rich,
beautiful, sought, courted, envied, not a requirement unsatisfied, not a
desire ungratified, nothing to wish for that you cannot have--it is
immeasurable good-fortune! I have seen myriads of girls, but none of whom
these extraordinary things could be truthfully said but you alone. And
you are worthy--worthy of it all, Lasca--I believe it in my heart.'
It made her infinitely proud and happy to hear me say this, and she
thanked me over and over again for that closing remark, and her voice and
eyes showed that she was touched. Presently she said:
'At last, this dream seemed about to be fulfilled. A stranger came by,
one day, who said his name was Kalula. I told him my name, and he said
he loved me. My heart gave a great bound of gratitude and pleasure, for
I had loved him at sight, and now I said so. He took me to his breast
and said he would not wish to be happier than he was now. We went
strolling together far over the ice-floes, telling all about each other,
and planning, oh, the loveliest future! When we were tired at last we sat
down and ate, for he had soap and candles and I had brought along some
blubber. We were hungry and nothing was ever so good.
'He belonged to a tribe whose haunts were far to the north, and I found
that he had never heard of my father, which rejoiced me exceedingly. I
mean he had heard of the millionaire, but had never heard his name--so,
you see, he could not know that I was the heiress. You may be sure that
I did not tell him. I was loved for myself at last, and was satisfied.
I was so happy--oh, happier than you can think!
'By-and-by it was towards supper time, and I led him home. As we
approached our house he was amazed, and cried out:
'It gave me a pang to hear that tone and see that admiring light in his
eye, but the feeling quickly passed away, for I loved him so, and he
looked so handsome and noble. All my family of aunts and uncles and
cousins were pleased with him, and many guests were called in, and the
house was shut up tight and the rag lamps lighted, and when everything
was hot and comfortable and suffocating, we began a joyous feast in
celebration of my betrothal.
'When the feast was over my father's vanity overcame him, and he could
not resist the temptation to show off his riches and let Kalula see what
grand good-fortune he had stumbled into--and mainly, of course, he wanted
to enjoy the poor man's amazement. I could have cried--but it would have
done no good to try to dissuade my father, so I said nothing, but merely
sat there and suffered.
'Of course, the astounding spectacle took the poor lad's breath away. He
could only stare in stupid astonishment, and wonder how a single
individual could possess such incredible riches. Then presently he
glanced brilliantly up and exclaimed:
'My father and all the rest burst into shouts of happy laughter, and when
my father gathered the treasure carelessly up as if it might be mere
rubbish and of no consequence, and carried it back to its place, poor
Kulala's surprise was a study. He said:
'"Is it possible that you put such things away without counting them?"
'"Well, truly, a body may know you have never been rich, since a mere
matter of a fish-hook or two is such a mighty matter in your eyes."
'"Ah, indeed, sir, I was never worth the value of the barb of one of
those precious things, and I have never seen any man before who was so
rich in them as to render the counting of his hoard worth while, since
the wealthiest man I have ever known, till now, was possessed of but
three."
'My foolish father roared again with jejune delight, and allowed the
impression to remain that he was not accustomed to count his hooks and
keep sharp watch over them. He was showing off, you see. Count them?
Why, he counted them every day!
'I had met and got acquainted with my darling just at dawn; I had brought
him home just at dark, three hours afterwards--for the days were
shortening toward the six-months' night at that time. We kept up the
festivities many hours; then, at last, the guests departed and the rest
of us distributed ourselves along the walls on sleeping-benches, and soon
all were steeped in dreams but me. I was too happy, too excited, to
sleep. After I had lain quiet a long, long time, a dim form passed by me
and was swallowed up in the gloom that pervaded the farther end of the
house. I could not make out who it was, or whether it was man or woman.
Presently that figure or another one passed me going the other way. I
wondered what it all meant, but wondering did no good; and while I was
still wondering I fell asleep.
'I do not know how long I slept, but at last I came suddenly broad awake
and heard my father say in a terrible voice, "By the great Snow God,
there's a fish-hook gone!" Something told me that that meant sorrow for
me, and the blood in my veins turned cold. The presentiment was
confirmed in the same instant: my father shouted, "Up, everybody, and
seize the stranger!" Then there was an outburst of cries and curses from
all sides, and a wild rush of dim forms through the obscurity. I flew to
my beloved's help, but what could I do but wait and wring my hands?--he
was already fenced away from me by a living wall, he was being bound hand
and foot. Not until he was secured would they let me get to him. I
flung myself upon his poor insulted form and cried my grief out upon his
breast while my father and all my family scoffed at me and heaped threats
and shameful epithets upon him. He bore his ill usage with a tranquil
dignity which endeared him to me more than ever, and made me proud and
happy to suffer with him and for him. I heard my father order that the
elders of the tribe be called together to try my Kalula for his life.
'"What!" I said, "before any search has been made for the lost hook?"
'"It is for you to laugh now; it is your turn. But ours is coming; wait
and see."
'I got a rag lamp. I thought I should find that miserable thing in one
little moment; and I set about that matter with such confidence that
those people grew grace, beginning to suspect that perhaps they had been
too hasty. But alas and alas!--oh, the bitterness of that search! There
was deep silence while one might count his fingers ten or twelve times,
then my heart began to sink, and around me the mockings began again, and
grew steadily louder and more assured, until at last, when I gave up,
they burst into volley after volley of cruel laughter.
'None will ever know what I suffered then. But my love was my support
and my strength, and I took my rightful place at my Kalula's side, and
put my arm about his neck, and whispered in his ear, saying:
'"Now, then, let the elders come!"--and as I said the words there was a
gathering sound of crunching snow outside, and then a vision of stooping
forms filing in at the door--the elders.
'My father formally accused the prisoner, and detailed the happenings of
the night. He said that the watchman was outside the door, and that in
the house were none but the family and the stranger. "Would the family
steal their own property?" He paused. The elders sat silent many
minutes; at last, one after another said to his neighbour, "This looks
bad for the stranger"--sorrowful words for me to hear. Then my father
sat down. O miserable, miserable me! At that very moment I could have
proved my darling innocent, but I did not know it!
'"Why should he steal that hook, or any or all of them? In another day
he would have been heir to the whole!"
I stood waiting. There was a long silence, the steam from the many
breaths rising about me like a fog. At last one elder after another
nodded his head slowly several times, and muttered, "There is force in
what the child has said." Oh, the heart-lift that was in those words!
--so transient, but, oh, so precious! I sat down.
'"If any would say further, let him speak now, or after hold his peace,"
said the chief of the court.
'"In the night a form passed by me in the gloom, going toward the
treasury and presently returned. I think, now, it was the stranger."
'Oh, I was like to swoon! I had supposed that that was my secret; not the
grip of the great Ice God himself could have dragged it out of my heart.
The chief of the court said sternly to my poor Kalula:
'"Speak!"
'"It was I. I could not sleep for thinking of the beautiful hooks. I
went there and kissed them and fondled them, to appease my spirit and
drown it in a harmless joy, then I put them back. I may have dropped
one, but I stole none."
'Oh, a fatal admission to make in such a place! There was an awful hush.
I knew he had pronounced his own doom, and that all was over. On every
face you could see the words hieroglyphed: "It is a confession!--and
paltry, lame, and thin."
'"It is the command of the court that the accused be subjected to the
trial by water."
'Oh, curses be upon the head of him who brought "trial by water" to our
land! It came, generations ago, from some far country that lies none
knows where. Before that our fathers used augury and other unsure
methods of trial, and doubtless some poor guilty creatures escaped with
their lives sometimes; but it is not so with trial by water, which is an
invention by wiser men than we poor ignorant savages are. By it the
innocent are proved innocent, without doubt or question, for they drown;
and the guilty are proven guilty with the same certainty, for they do not
drown. My heart was breaking in my bosom, for I said, "He is innocent,
and he will go down under the waves and I shall never see him more."
'I never left his side after that. I mourned in his arms all the
precious hours, and he poured out the deep stream of his love upon me,
and oh, I was so miserable and so happy! At last, they tore him from me,
and I followed sobbing after them, and saw them fling him into the sea
--then I covered my face with my hands. Agony? Oh, I know the deepest
deeps of that word!
'The next moment the people burst into a shout of malicious joy, and I
took away my hands, startled. Oh, bitter sight--he was swimming! My
heart turned instantly to stone, to ice. I said, "He was guilty, and he
lied to me!" I turned my back in scorn and went my way homeward.
'They took him far out to sea and set him on an iceberg that was drifting
southward in the great waters. Then my family came home, and my father
said to me:
'"Your thief sent his dying message to you, saying, 'Tell her I am
innocent, and that all the days and all the hours and all the minutes
while I starve and perish I shall love her and think of her and bless the
day that gave me sight of her sweet face.'" Quite pretty, even poetical!
'I said, "He is dirt--let me never hear mention of him again." And oh,
to think--he was innocent all the time!
'Nine months--nine dull, sad months--went by, and at last came the day of
the Great Annual Sacrifice, when all the maidens of the tribe wash their
faces and comb their hair. With the first sweep of my comb out came the
fatal fish-hook from where it had been all those months nestling, and I
fell fainting into the arms of my remorseful father! Groaning, he said,
"We murdered him, and I shall never smile again!" He has kept his word.
Listen; from that day to this not a month goes by that I do not comb my
hair. But oh, where is the good of it all now!'
So ended the poor maid's humble little tale--whereby we learn that since
a hundred million dollars in New York and twenty-two fish-hooks on the
border of the Arctic Circle represent the same financial supremacy, a man
in straitened circumstances is a fool to stay in New York when he can buy
ten cents' worth of fish-hooks and emigrate.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND THE BOOK OF MRS. EDDY
'It is the first time since the dawn-days of Creation that a Voice
has gone crashing through space with such placid and complacent
confidence and command.'
This last summer, when I was on my way back to Vienna from the
Appetite-Cure in the mountains, I fell over a cliff in the twilight and
broke some arms and legs and one thing or another, and by good luck was
found by some peasants who had lost an ass, and they carried me to the
nearest habitation, which was one of those large, low, thatch-roofed
farm-houses, with apartments in the garret for the family, and a cunning
little porch under the deep gable decorated with boxes of bright-coloured
flowers and cats; on the ground floor a large and light sitting-room,
separated from the milch-cattle apartment by a partition; and in the
front yard rose stately and fine the wealth and pride of the house, the
manure-pile. That sentence is Germanic, and shows that I am acquiring
that sort of mastery of the art and spirit of the language which enables
a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars.
There was a village a mile away, and a horse-doctor lived there, but
there was no surgeon. It seemed a bad outlook; mine was distinctly a
surgery case. Then it was remembered that a lady from Boston was
summering in that village, and she was a Christian Science doctor and
could cure anything. So she was sent for. It was night by this time,
and she could not conveniently come, but sent word that it was no matter,
there was no hurry, she would give me 'absent treatment' now, and come in
the morning; meantime she begged me to make myself tranquil and
comfortable and remember that there was nothing the matter with me. I
thought there must be some mistake.
'Did you tell her I walked off a cliff seventy-five feet high?'
'Yes.'
'Yes.'
'Yes.'
'Yes.'
'Yes.'
'That accounts for it; she is thinking of the boulders. Why didn't you
tell her I got hurt, too?'
'I did. I told her what you told me to tell her: that you were now but
an incoherent series of compound fractures extending from your scalp-lock
to your heels, and that the comminuted projections caused you to look
like a hat-rack.'
'And it was after this that she wished me to remember that there was
nothing the matter with me?'
'I do not understand it. I believe she has not diagnosed the case with
sufficient care. Did she look like a person who was theorising, or did
she look like one who has fallen off precipices herself and brings to the
aid of abstract science the confirmation of personal experience?'
'Bitte?'
'Why?'
'She said you would have these delusions, but must pay no attention to
them. She wants you to particularly remember that there are no such
things as hunger and thirst and pain.'
'Bitte?'
'Do they let her run at large, or do they tie her up?'
'There, good-night, run along; you are a good girl, but your mental
Geschirr is not arranged for light and airy conversation. Leave me to my
delusions.'
II
'Return it to its receptacle. We deal with the mind only, not with its
dumb servants.'
I could not offer my pulse, because the connection was broken; but she
detected the apology before I could word it, and indicated by a negative
tilt of her head that the pulse was another dumb servant that she had no
use for. Then I thought I would tell her my symptoms and how I felt, so
that she would understand the case; but that was another inconsequence,
she did not need to know those things; moreover, my remark about how I
felt was an abuse of language, a misapplication of terms--
'One does not feel,' she explained; 'there is no such thing as feeling:
therefore, to speak of a non-existent thing as existent as a
contradiction. Matter has no existence; nothing exists but mind; the
mind cannot feel pain, it can only imagine it.'
'A cat has no opinion; opinions proceed from the mind only; the lower
animals, being eternally perishable, have not been granted mind; without
mind opinion is impossible.'
'I have already told you there is no such thing as real pain.'
'It is strange and interesting. I do wonder what was the matter with the
cat. Because, there being no such thing as real pain, and she not being
able to imagine an imaginary thing, it would seem that God in his Pity
has compensated the cat with some kind of a mysterious emotion useable
when her tail is trodden on which for the moment joins cat and Christian
in one common brotherhood of--'
'Peace! The cat feels nothing, the Christian feels nothing. Your empty
and foolish imaginings are profanation and blasphemy, and can do you an
injury. It is wiser and better and holier to recognise and confess that
there is no such thing as disease or pain or death.'
'There is no occasion to get rid of them, since they do not exist. They
are illusions propagated by matter, and matter has no existence; there is
no such thing as matter.'
'It sounds right and clear, but yet it seems in a degree elusive; it
seems to slip through, just when you think you are getting a grip on it.'
'Explain.'
'Well, for instance: if there is no such thing as matter, how can matter
propagate things?'
In her compassion she almost smiled. She would have smiled if there were
any such thing as a smile.
It seemed nebulous: it did not seem to say anything about the difficulty
in hand--how non-existent matter can propagate illusions. I said, with
some hesitancy:
'Does--does it explain?'
'Very well. Disease sin evil death deny Good omnipotent God life matter
is nothing all being Spirit God Mind is Good good is God all in All is
God. There--do you understand now?
'Well?'
'Could you try it some more ways?'
'As many as you like: it always means the same. Interchanged in any way
you please it cannot be made to mean anything different from what it
means when put in any other way. Because it is perfect. You can jumble
it all up, and it makes no difference: it always comes out the way it was
before. It was a marvellous mind that produced it. As a mental tour de
force it is without a mate, it defies alike the simple, the concrete, and
the occult.'
I blushed for the word, but it was out before I could stop it.
'A what?'
'Ah--proof. Now we are coming at it. The statements agree; they agree
with--with--anyway, they agree; I noticed that; but what is it they
prove--I mean, in particular?'
'Crystal.'
'Not earlier?'
'No, not until the teaching and preparation for the Third Degree are
completed.'
'It is not until then that one is enabled to take hold of Christian
Science effectively, and with the right sense of sympathy and kinship, as
I understand you. That is to say, it could not succeed during the
process of the Second Degree, because there would still be remains of
mind left; and therefore--but I interrupted you. You were about to
further explain the good results proceeding from the erosions and
disintegrations effected by the Third Degree. It is very interesting: go
on, please.'
'It is beautiful. And with that exhaustive exactness your choice and
arrangement of words confirms and establishes what you have claimed for
the powers and functions of the Third Degree. The Second could probably
produce only temporary absence of mind, it is reserved to the Third to
make it permanent. A sentence framed under the auspices of the Second
could have a kind of meaning--a sort of deceptive semblance of it
--whereas it is only under the magic of the Third that that defect would
disappear. Also, without doubt, it is the Third Degree that contributes
another remarkable specialty to Christian Science: viz., ease and flow
and lavishness of words, and rhythm and swing and smoothness. There must
be a special reason for this?'
'These are noble thoughts. They make one burn to know more. How does
Christian Science explain the spiritual relation of systematic duality to
incidental reflection?'
(It is very curious, the effect which Christian Science has upon the
verbal bowels. Particularly the Third Degree; it makes one think of a
dictionary with the cholera. But I only thought this; I did not say it.)
'In a sense, it is a gift of God. That is to say, its powers are from
Him, but the credit of the discovery of the powers and what they are for
is due to an American lady.'
'In 1866. That is the immortal date when pain and disease and death
disappeared from the earth to return no more for ever. That is, the
fancies for which those terms stand, disappeared. The things themselves
had never existed; therefore as soon as it was perceived that there were
no such things, they were easily banished. The history and nature of the
great discovery are set down in the book here, and--'
'Yes, she wrote it all, herself. The title is "Science and Health, with
Key to the Scriptures"--for she explains the Scriptures; they were not
understood before. Not even by the twelve Disciples. She begins thus--I
will read it to you.'
'I don't care what it says, and I don't wish to talk about it.'
'I am sorry if I have offended, but you see the mention seemed in some
way inconsistent, and--'
The word flattened itself against my mind trying to get in, and
disordered me a little, and before I could inquire into its pertinency,
she was already throwing the needed light:
'But without your glasses your failing eyesight does not permit you to--'
'My eyesight cannot fail; nothing can fail; the Mind is master, and the
Mind permits no retrogression.'
She was under the inspiration of the Third Degree, therefore there could
be no profit in continuing this part of the subject. I shifted to other
ground and inquired further concerning the Discoverer of the Science.
'Did the discovery come suddenly, like Klondike, or after long study and
calculation, like America?'
'Eighteen centuries!'
'All God, God-good, good-God, Truth, Bones, Liver, one of a series alone
and without equal--it is amazing!'
'You may well say it, sir. Yet it is but the truth. This American lady,
our revered and sacred founder, is distinctly referred to and her coming
prophesied, in the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse; she could not have
been more plainly indicated by St. John without actually mentioning her
name.'
'I will quote her own words, for her "Key to the Scriptures:" "The
twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse has a special suggestiveness in
connection with this nineteenth century." There--do you note that?
Think--note it well.'
'Listen, and you will know. I quote her inspired words again: "In the
opening of the Sixth Seal, typical of six thousand years since Adam,
there is one distinctive feature which has special reference to the
present age. Thus:
'"Revelation xii. 6. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she
had a place prepared of God."
'That is Boston.'
'I recognise it, madam. These are sublime things and impressive; I never
understood these passages before; please go on with the--with the
--proofs.'
'"And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a
cloud; and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the
sun, and his feet as pillars of fire. And he had in his hand a little
book."
'A little book, merely a little book--could words be modester? Yet how
stupendous its importance! Do you know what book that was?'
'Was it--'
'Love, Livers, Lights, Bones, Truth, Kidneys, one of a series, alone and
without equal--it is beyond imagination and wonder!'
'Hear our Founder's eloquent words: "Then will a voice from harmony cry,
'Go and take the little book; take it and eat it up, and it shall make
thy belly bitter; but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey.' Mortal,
obey the heavenly evangel. Take up Divine Science. Read it from
beginning to end. Study it, ponder it. It will be indeed sweet at its
first taste, when it heals you; but murmur not over Truth, if you find
its digestion bitter." You now know the history of our dear and holy
Science, sir, and that its origin is not of this earth, but only its
discovery. I will leave the book with you and will go, now, but give
yourself no uneasiness--I will give you absent treatment from now till I
go to bed.'
III
Under the powerful influence of the near treatment and the absent
treatment together, my bones were gradually retreating inward and
disappearing from view. The good word took a brisk start, now, and went
on quite swiftly. My body was diligently straining and stretching, this
way and that, to accommodate the processes of restoration, and every
minute or two I heard a dull click inside and knew that the two ends of a
fracture had been successfully joined. This muffled clicking and
gritting and grinding and rasping continued during the next three hours,
and then stopped--the connections had all been made. All except
dislocations; there were only seven of these: hips, shoulders, knees,
neck; so that was soon over; one after another they slipped into their
sockets with a sound like pulling a distant cork, and I jumped up as good
as new, as to framework, and sent for the horse-doctor.
The horse-doctor came, a pleasant man and full of hope and professional
interest in the case. In the matter of smell he was pretty aromatic, in
fact quite horsey, and I tried to arrange with him for absent treatment,
but it was not in his line, so out of delicacy I did not press it. He
looked at my teeth and examined my hock, and said my age and general
condition were favourable to energetic measures; therefore he would give
me something to turn the stomach-ache into the botts and the cold in the
head into the blind staggers; then he should be on his own beat and would
know what to do. He made up a bucket of bran-mash, and said a dipperful
of it every two hours, alternated with a drench with turpentine and
axle-grease in it, would either knock my ailments out of me in
twenty-four hours or so interest me in other ways as to make me forget
they were on the premises. He administered my first dose himself, then
took his leave, saying I was free to eat and drink anything I pleased and
in any quantity I liked. But I was not hungry any more, and did not care
for food.
I took up the 'Christian Scientist' book and read half of it, then took a
dipperful of drench and read the other half. The resulting experiences
were full of interest and adventure. All through the rumblings and
grindings and quakings and effervescings accompanying the evolution of
the ache into the botts and the cold into the blind staggers I could note
the generous struggle for mastery going on between the mash and the
drench and the literature; and often I could tell which was ahead, and
could easily distinguish the literature from the others when the others
were separate, though not when they were mixed; for when a bran-mash and
an eclectic drench are mixed together they look just like the Apodictical
Principle out on a lark, and no one can tell it from that. The finish
was reached at last, the evolutions were complete and a fine success; but
I think that this result could have been achieved with fewer materials.
I believe the mash was necessary to the conversion of the stomach-ache
into the boots, but I think one could develop the blind staggers out of
the literature by itself; also, that blind staggers produced in this way
would be of a better quality and more lasting than any produced by the
artificial processes of a horse-doctor.
IV
I surmise that the first translation was poor; and that a friend or
friends of Mrs. Eddy mended its English three times, and finally got it
into its present shape, where the grammar is plenty good enough, and the
sentences are smooth and plausible though they do not mean anything. I
think I am right in this surmise, for Mrs. Eddy cannot write English
to-day, and this is argument that she never could. I am not able to
guess who did the mending, but I think it was not done by any member of
the Eddy Trust, nor by the editors of the 'Christian Science Journal,'
for their English is not much better than Mrs. Eddy's.
However, as to the main point: it is certain that Mrs. Eddy did not
doctor the Annex's English herself. Her original, spontaneous,
undoctored English furnishes ample proof of this. Here are samples from
recent articles from her unappeasable pen; double columned with them are
a couple of passages from the Annex. It will be seen that they throw
light. The italics are mine:
You notice the contrast between the smooth, plausible, elegant, addled
English of the doctored Annex and the lumbering, ragged, ignorant output
of the translator's natural, spontaneous, and unmedicated penwork. The
English of the Annex has been slicked up by a very industrious and
painstaking hand--but it was not Mrs. Eddy's.
If Mrs. Eddy really wrote or translated the Annex, her original draft was
exactly in harmony with the English of her plague-spot or bacilli which
were gnawing at the insides of the metropolis and bringing its heart on
bended knee, thus exposing to the eye the rest of the skeleton breathing
slowly through a barren breast. And it bore little or no resemblance to
the book as we have it now--now that the salaried polisher has holystoned
all of the genuine Eddyties out of it.
1. What injurious influence was it that was affecting the city's morals?
It was a social club which propagated an interest in idle amusements,
disseminated a knowledge of games, et cetera.
2. By the magic of the new and nobler influences the sterile spaces were
transformed into wooded parks, the merry electric car replaced the
melancholy 'bus, smooth concrete the tempestuous plank sidewalk, the
macadamised road the primitive corduroy, et cetera.
3. Its pleasant suburbs gone, there was little left to admire save the
wrecked graveyard with its uncanny exposures.
The Annex contains one sole and solitary humorous remark. There is a
most elaborate and voluminous Index, and it is preceded by this note:
'This Index will enable the student to find any thought or idea contained
in the book.'
Faith in the doctor. Perhaps that is the entire thing. It seems to look
like it. In old times the King cured the king's evil by the touch of the
royal hand. He frequently made extraordinary cures. Could his footman
have done it? No--not in his own clothes. Disguised as the King, could
he have done it? I think we may not doubt it. I think we may feel sure
that it was not the King's touch that made the cure in any instance, but
the patient's faith in the efficacy of a King's touch. Genuine and
remarkable cures have been achieved through contact with the relics of a
saint. Is it not likely that any other bones would have done as well if
the substitution had been concealed from the patient? When I was a boy,
a farmer's wife who lived five miles from our village, had great fame as
a faith-doctor--that was what she called herself. Sufferers came to her
from all around, and she laid her hand upon them and said, 'Have faith
--it is all that is necessary,' and they went away well of their ailments.
She was not a religious woman, and pretended to no occult powers. She
said that the patient's faith in her did the work. Several times I saw
her make immediate cures of severe toothaches. My mother was the
patient. In Austria there is a peasant who drives a great trade in this
sort of industry and has both the high and the low for patients. He gets
into prison every now and then for practising without a diploma, but his
business is as brisk as ever when he gets out, for his work is
unquestionably successful and keeps his reputation high. In Bavaria
there is a man who performed so many great cures that he had to retire
from his profession of stage-carpentering in order to meet the demand of
his constantly increasing body of customers. He goes on from year to
year doing his miracles, and has become very rich. He pretends to no
religious helps, no supernatural aids, but thinks there is something in
his make-up which inspires the confidence of his patients, and that it is
this confidence which does the work and not some mysterious power issuing
from himself.
They all achieve some cures, there is no question about it; and the Faith
Cure and the Prayer Cure probably do no harm when they do no good, since
they do not forbid the patient to help out the cure with medicines if he
wants to; but the others bar medicines, and claim ability to cure every
conceivable human ailment through the application of their mental forces
alone. They claim ability to cure malignant cancer, and other affections
which have never been cured in the history of the race. There would seem
to be an element of danger here. It has the look of claiming too much, I
think. Public confidence would probably be increased if less were
claimed.
I believe it might be shown that all the 'mind' sects except Christian
Science have lucid intervals; intervals in which they betray some
diffidence, and in effect confess that they are not the equals of the
Deity; but if the Christian Scientist even stops with being merely the
equal of the Deity, it is not clearly provable by his Christian-Science
Amended Bible. In the usual Bible the Deity recognises pain, disease,
and death as facts, but the Christian Scientist knows better. Knows
better, and is not diffident about saying so.
The Christian Scientist was not able to cure my stomach-ache and my cold;
but the horse-doctor did it. This convinces me that Christian Science
claims too much. In my opinion it ought to let diseases alone and
confine itself to surgery. There it would have everything its own way.
I gave her an imaginary cheque, and now she is suing me for substantial
dollars. It looks inconsistent.
VI
Those of us who are not in the asylum, and not demonstrably due there,
are nevertheless no doubt insane in one or two particulars--I think we
must admit this; but I think that we are otherwise healthy-minded. I
think that when we all see one thing alike, it is evidence that as
regards that one thing, our minds are perfectly sound. Now there are
really several things which we do all see alike; things which we all
accept, and about which we do not dispute. For instance, we who are
outside of the asylum all agree that water seeks its level; that the sun
gives light and heat; that fire consumes; that fog is damp; that 6 times
6 are thirty-six; that 2 from 10 leave eight; that 8 and 7 are fifteen.
These are perhaps the only things we are agreed about; but although they
are so few, they are of inestimable value, because they make an
infallible standard of sanity. Whosoever accepts them we know to be
substantially sane; sufficiently sane; in the working essentials, sane.
Whoever disputes a single one of them we know to be wholly insane, and
qualified for the asylum.
Very well, the man who disputes none of them we concede to be entitled to
go at large--but that is concession enough; we cannot go any further than
that; for we know that in all matters of mere opinion that same man is
insane--just as insane as we are; just as insane as Shakespeare was, just
as insane as the Pope is. We know exactly where to put our finger upon
his insanity; it is where his opinion differs from ours.
The--but there's no end to the list; there are millions of them! And all
insane; each in his own way; insane as to his pet fad or opinion, but
otherwise sane and rational.
Perhaps I am putting the tandem arrangement too far away; perhaps five
years might be nearer the mark than fifty; for a Viennese lady told me
last night that in the Christian Science Mosque in Boston she noticed
some things which seem to me to promise a shortening of the interval; on
one side there was a display of texts from the New Testament, signed with
the Saviour's initials, 'J.C.;' and on the opposite side a display of
texts from the 'little book' signed--with the author's mere initials?
No--signed with Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy's name in full. Perhaps the
Angel of the Apocalypse likes this kind of piracy. I made this remark
lightly to a Christian Scientist this morning, but he did not receive it
lightly, but said it was jesting upon holy things; he said there was no
piracy, for the angel did not compose the book, he only brought it--'God
composed it.' I could have retorted that it was a case of piracy just
the same; that the displayed texts should be signed with the Author's
initials, and that to sign them with the translator's train of names was
another case of 'jesting upon holy things.' However, I did not say these
things, for this Scientist was a large person, and although by his own
doctrine we have no substance, but are fictions and unrealities, I knew
he could hit me an imaginary blow which would furnish me an imaginary
pain which could last me a week. The lady said that in that Mosque there
were two pulpits; in one of them was a man with the Former Bible, in the
other a woman with Mrs. Eddy's apocalyptic Annex; and from these books
the man and the woman were reading verse and verse about:
'Hungry ones throng to hear the Bible read in connection with the
text-book of Christian Science, "Science and Health, with Key to the
Scriptures," by Mary Baker G. Eddy. These are our only preachers.
They are the word of God.'--Christian Science Journal, October
1898.
Are these things picturesque? The Viennese lady told me that in a chapel
of the Mosque there was a picture or image of Mrs. Eddy, and that before
it burns a never-extinguished light. Is that picturesque? How long do
you think it will be before the Christian Scientist will be worshipping
that image and praying to it? How long do you think it will be before it
is claimed that Mrs. Eddy is a Redeemer, a Christ, or Christ's equal?
Already her army of disciples speak of her reverently as 'Our Mother.'
How long will it be before they place her on the steps of the Throne
beside the Virgin--and later a step higher? First, Mary the Virgin and
Mary the Matron; later, with a change of Precedence, Mary the Matron and
Mary the Virgin. Let the artist get ready with his canvas and his
brushes; the new Renaissance is on its way, and there will be money in
altar-canvases--a thousand times as much as the Popes and their Church
ever spent on the Old Masters; for their riches were as poverty as
compared with what is going to pour into the treasure-chest of the
Christian-Scientist Papacy by-and-by, let us not doubt it. We will
examine the financial outlook presently and see what it promises. A
favourite subject of the new Old Master will be the first verse of the
twelfth chapter of Revelation--a verse which Mrs. Eddy says (in her Annex
to the Scriptures) has 'one distinctive feature which has special
reference to the present age'--and to her, as is rather pointedly
indicated:
The woman clothed with the sun will be a portrait of Mrs. Eddy.
It has its start, you see, and it is a phenomenally good one. Moreover,
it is latterly spreading with a constantly accelerating swiftness. It
has a better chance to grow and prosper and achieve permanency than any
other existing 'ism;' for it has more to offer than any other. The past
teaches us that, in order to succeed, a movement like this must not be a
mere philosophy, it must be a religion; also, that it must not claim
entire originality, but content itself with passing for an improvement on
an existing religion, and show its hand later, when strong and
prosperous--like Mohammedanism.
Next, the power and authority and capital must be concentrated in the
grip of a small and irresponsible clique, with nobody outside privileged
to ask questions or find fault.
Next, as before remarked, it must bait its hook with some new and
attractive advantages over the baits offered by the other religions.
VII
Remember its principal great offer: to rid the Race of pain and disease.
Can it do it? In large measure, yes. How much of the pain and disease
in the world is created by the imaginations of the sufferers, and then
kept alive by those same imaginations? Four-fifths? Not anything short
of that I should think. Can Christian Science banish that four-fifths?
I think so. Can any other (organised) force do it? None that I know of.
Would this be a new world when that was accomplished? And a pleasanter
one--for us well people, as well as for those fussy and fretting sick
ones? Would it seem as if there was not as much gloomy weather as there
used to be? I think so.
In the meantime would the Scientist kill off a good many patients? I
think so. More than get killed off now by the legalised methods? I will
take up that question presently.
'He is a worried and fretted and fearful man; afraid of himself and his
propensities, afraid of colds and fevers, afraid of treading on serpents
or drinking deadly things.'
'The average Christian Scientist has put all anxiety and fretting under
his feet. He does have a victory over fear and care that is not achieved
by the average orthodox Christian.'
He has put all anxiety and fretting under his feet. What proportion of
your earnings or income would you be willing to pay for that frame of
mind, year in year out? It really outvalues any price that can be put
upon it. Where can you purchase it, at any outlay of any sort, in any
Church or out of it, except the Scientist's?
Well, it is the anxiety and fretting about colds, and fevers, and
draughts, and getting our feet wet, and about forbidden food eaten in
terror of indigestion, that brings on the cold and the fever and the
indigestion and the most of our other ailments; and so, if the Science
can banish that anxiety from the world I think it can reduce the world's
disease and pain about four-fifths.
In this October number many of the redeemed testify and give thanks; and
not coldly but with passionate gratitude. As a rule they seem drunk with
health, and with the surprise of it, the wonder of it, the unspeakable
glory and splendour of it, after a long sober spell spent in inventing
imaginary diseases and concreting them with doctor-stuff. The first
witness testifies that when 'this most beautiful Truth first dawned on
him' he had 'nearly all the ills that flesh is heir to;' that those he
did not have he thought he had--and thus made the tale about complete.
What was the natural result? Why, he was a dump-pit 'for all the
doctors, druggists, and patent medicines of the country.' Christian
Science came to his help, and 'the old sick conditions passed away,' and
along with them the 'dismal forebodings' which he had been accustomed to
employ in conjuring up ailments. And so he was a healthy and cheerful
man, now, and astonished.
But I am not astonished, for from other sources I know what must have
been his method of applying Christian Science. If I am in the right, he
watchfully and diligently diverted his mind from unhealthy channels and
compelled it to travel in healthy ones. Nothing contrivable by human
invention could be more formidably effective than that, in banishing
imaginary ailments and in closing the entrances against subsequent
applicants of their breed. I think his method was to keep saying, 'I am
well! I am sound!--sound and well! well and sound! Perfectly sound,
perfectly well! I have no pain; there's no such thing as pain! I have no
disease; there's no such thing as disease! Nothing is real but Mind; all
is Mind, All-Good, Good-Good, Life, Soul, Liver, Bones, one of a series,
ante and pass the buck!'
I do not mean that that was exactly the formula used, but that it
doubtless contains the spirit of it. The Scientist would attach value to
the exact formula, no doubt, and to the religious spirit in which it was
used. I should think that any formula that would divert the mind from
unwholesome channels and force it into healthy ones would answer every
purpose with some people, though not with all. I think it most likely
that a very religious man would find the addition of the religious spirit
a powerful reinforcement in his case.
The second witness testifies that the Science banished 'an old organic
trouble' which the doctor and the surgeon had been nursing with drugs and
the knife for seven years.
This witness offers testimony for a clergyman seventy years old who had
preached forty years in a Christian church, and has not gone over to the
new sect. He was 'almost blind and deaf.' He was treated by the C.S.
method, and 'when he heard the voice of Truth he saw spiritually.' Saw
spiritually. It is a little indefinite; they had better treat him again.
Indefinite testimonies might properly be waste-basketed, since there is
evidently no lack of definite ones procurable, but this C.S. magazine is
poorly edited, and so mistakes of this kind must be expected.
The next witness is a soldier of the Civil War. When Christian Science
found him, he had in stock the following claims:
Indigestion,
Rheumatism,
Catarrh,
Chalky deposits in
Shoulder joints,
Arm joints,
Hand joints,
Atrophy of the muscles of
Arms,
Shoulders,
Stiffness of all those joints,
Insomnia,
Excruciating pains most of the time.
These claims have a very substantial sound. They came of exposure in the
campaigns. The doctors did all they could, but it was little. Prayers
were tried, but 'I never realised any physical relief from that source.'
After thirty years of torture he went to a Christian Scientist and took
an hour's treatment and went home painless. Two days later he 'began to
eat like a well man.' Then 'the claims vanished--some at once, others
more gradually;' finally, 'they have almost entirely disappeared.' And
--a thing which is of still greater value--he is now 'contented and happy.'
That is a detail which, as earlier remarked, is a Scientist-Church
specialty. With thirty-one years' effort the Methodist Church had not
succeeded in furnishing it to this harassed soldier.
And so the tale goes on. Witness after witness bulletins his claims,
declares their prompt abolishment, and gives Mrs. Eddy's Discovery the
praise. Milk-leg is cured; nervous prostration is cured; consumption is
cured; and St. Vitus's dance made a pastime. And now and then an
interesting new addition to the Science slang appears on the page. We
have 'demonstrations over' chilblains and such things. It seems to be a
curtailed way of saying 'demonstrations of the power of Christian-Science
Truth over the fiction which masquerades under the name of Chilblains.'
The children as well as the adults, share in the blessings of the
Science. 'Through the study of the "little book" they are learning how
to be healthful, peaceful, and wise.' Sometimes they are cured of their
little claims by the professional healer, and sometimes more advanced
children say over the formula and cure themselves.
Among other witnesses, there is one who had a 'jumping toothache,' which
several times tempted her to 'believe that there was sensation in matter,
but each time it was overcome by the power of Truth.' She would not
allow the dentist to use cocaine, but sat there and let him punch and
drill and split and crush the tool, and tear and slash its ulcerations,
and pull out the nerve, and dig out fragments of bone; and she wouldn't
once confess that it hurt. And to this day she thinks it didn't, and I
have not a doubt that she is nine-tenths right, and that her Christian
Science faith did her better service than she could have gotten out of
cocaine.
There is an account of a boy who got broken all up into small bits by an
accident, but said over the Scientific Statement of Being, or some of the
other incantations, and got well and sound without having suffered any
real pain and without the intrusion of a surgeon. I can believe this,
because my own case was somewhat similar, as per my former article.
VIII
'We consciously declare that "Science and Health with Key to the
Scriptures," was foretold as well as its author, Mary Baker Eddy, in
Revelation x. She is the "mighty angel," or God's highest thought
to this age (verse 1), giving us the spiritual interpretation of the
Bible in the "little book open" (verse 2). Thus we prove that
Christian Science is the second coming of Christ--Truth--Spirit.'
--Lecture by Dr. George Tomkins, D.D., C.S.
There you have it in plain speech. She is the mighty angel; she is the
divinely and officially sent bearer of God's highest thought. For the
present, she brings the Second Advent. We must expect that before she
has been in her grave fifty years she will be regarded by her following
as having been herself the Second Advent. She is already worshipped, and
we must expect this feeling to spread territorially, and also to deepen
in intensity [1].
The Trust has still other sources of income. Mrs. Eddy is president (and
perhaps proprietor?) of the Trust's Metaphysical College in Boston, where
the student who has practised C.S. healing during three years the best
he knew how perfects himself in the game by a two weeks' course, and pays
one hundred dollars for it! And I have a case among my statistics where
the student had a three weeks' course and paid three hundred for it.
The Trust does love the Dollar when it isn't a spiritual one.
Through friends in America I asked some questions, and in some cases got
definite and informing answers; in other cases the answers were not
definite and not valuable. From the definite answers I gather than the
'capitation-tax' is compulsory, and that the sum is one dollar. To the
question, 'Does any of the money go to charities?' the answer from an
authoritative source was: 'No, not in the sense usually conveyed by this
word*.' (The italics are mine.) That answer is cautious. But definite,
I think--utterly and unassailably definite--although quite
Christian-scientifically foggy in its phrasing. Christian Science is
generally foggy, generally diffuse, generally garrulous. The writer was
aware that the first word in his phrase answered the question which I was
asking, but he could not help adding nine dark words. Meaningless ones,
unless explained by him. It is quite likely--as intimated by him--that
Christian Science has invented a new class of objects to apply the word
charity to, but without an explanation we cannot know what they are. We
quite easily and naturally and confidently guess that they are in all
cases objects which will return five hundred per cent. on the Trust's
investment in them, but guessing is not knowledge; it is merely, in this
case, a sort of nine-tenths certainty deducible from what we think we
know of the Trust's trade principles and its sly and furtive and shifty
ways.
Sly? Deep? Judicious? The Trust understands business. The Trust does
not give itself away. It defeats all the attempts of us impertinents to
get at its trade secrets. To this day, after all our diligence, we have
not been able to get it to confess what it does with the money. It does
not even let its own disciples find out. All it says is, that the matter
has been 'demonstrated over.' Now and then a lay Scientist says, with a
grateful exultation, that Mrs. Eddy is enormously rich, but he stops
there; as to whether any of the money goes to other charities or not, he
is obliged to admit that he does not know. However, the Trust is
composed of human beings; and this justifies the conjecture that if it
had a charity on its list which it did not need to blush for, we should
soon hear of it.
'Without money and without price.' Those used to be the terms. Mrs.
Eddy's Annex cancels them. The motto of Christian Science is 'The
labourer is worthy of his hire.' And now that it has been 'demonstrated
over,' we find its spiritual meaning to be, 'Do anything and everything
your hand may find to do; and charge cash for it, and collect the money
in advance.' The Scientist has on his tongue's end a cut-and-dried,
Boston-supplied set of rather lean arguments whose function is to show
that it is a Heaven-commanded duty to do this, and that the croupiers of
the game have no choice by to obey.
I have no reverence for Mrs. Eddy and the rest of the Trust--if there is
a rest--but I am not lacking in reverence for the sincerities of the lay
membership of the new Church. There is every evidence that the lay
members are entirely sincere in their faith, and I think sincerity is
always entitled to honour and respect, let the inspiration of the
sincerity be what it may. Zeal and sincerity can carry a new religion
further than any other missionary except fire and sword, and I believe
that the new religion will conquer the half of Christendom in a hundred
years. I am not intending this as a compliment to the human race, I am
merely stating an opinion. And yet I think that perhaps it is a
compliment to the race. I keep in mind that saying of an orthodox
preacher--quoted further back. He conceded that this new Christianity
frees its possessor's life from frets, fears, vexations, bitterness, and
all sorts of imagination-propagated maladies and pains, and fills his
world with sunshine and his heart with gladness. If Christian Science,
with this stupendous equipment--and final salvation added--cannot win
half the Christian globe, I must be badly mistaken in the make-up of the
human race.
I think the Trust will be handed down like the other papacy, and will
always know how to handle its limitless cash. It will press the button;
the zeal, the energy, the sincerity, the enthusiasm of its countless
vassals will do the rest.
IX
The power which a man's imagination has over his body to heal it or make
it sick is a force which none of us is born without. The first man had
it, the last one will possess it. If left to himself a man is most
likely to use only the mischievous half of the force--the half which
invents imaginary ailments for him and cultivates them: and if he is one
of these very wise people he is quite likely to scoff at the beneficent
half of the force and deny its existence. And so, to heal or help that
man, two imaginations are required: his own and some outsider's. The
outsider, B, must imagine that his incantations are the healing power
that is curing A, and A must imagine that this is so. It is not so, at
all; but no matter, the cure is effected, and that is the main thing.
The outsider's work is unquestionably valuable; so valuable that it may
fairly be likened to the essential work performed by the engineer when he
handles the throttle and turns on the steam: the actual power is lodged
exclusively in the engine, but if the engine were left alone it would
never start of itself. Whether the engineer be named Jim, or Bob, or
Tom, it is all one--his services are necessary, and he is entitled to
such wage as he can get you to pay. Whether he be named Christian
Scientist, or Mental Scientist, or Mind Curist, or Lourdes
Miracle-Worker, or King's-Evil Expert, it is all one,--he is merely the
Engineer, he simply turns on the same old steam and the engine does the
whole work.
The Christian Scientist has organised the business. Now that was
certainly a gigantic idea. There is more intellect in it than
would be needed in the invention of a couple of millions of Eddy
Science-and-Health Bible Annexes. Electricity, in limitless volume, has
existed in the air and the rocks and the earth and everywhere since time
began--and was going to waste all the while. In our time we have
organised that scattered and wandering force and set it to work, and
backed the business with capital, and concentrated it in few and
competent hands, and the results are as we see.
The Christian Scientist has taken a force which has been lying idle in
every member of the human race since time began, and has organised it,
and backed the business with capital, and concentrated it at Boston
headquarters in the hands of a small and very competent Trust, and there
are results.
Therein lies the promise that this monopoly is going to extend its
commerce wide in the earth. I think that if the business were conducted
in the loose and disconnected fashion customary with such things, it
would achieve but little more than the modest prosperity usually secured
by unorganised great moral and commercial ventures; but I believe that so
long as this one remains compactly organised and closely concentrated in
a Trust, the spread of its dominion will continue.
[1] After raising a dead child to life, the disciple who did it writes an
account of her performance, to Mrs. Eddy, and closes it thus: 'My prayer
daily is to be more spiritual, that I may do more as you would have me
do... and may we all love you more and so live it that the world may
know that the Christ is come.'--Printed in the Concord, N.H.,
Independent Statesman, March 9, 1899. If this is no worship, it is a
good imitation of it.
[2] In the past two years the membership of the Established Church of
England have given voluntary contributions amounting to $73,000,000 to
the Church's benevolent enterprises. Churches that give have nothing to
hide.
IS HE LIVING OR IS HE DEAD?
'Quick! Cast your eye on the man going out at the door. Take in every
detail of him.'
'Why?'
I supposed that Smith would now proceed to justify the large interest
which he had shown in Monsieur Magnan, but, instead, he dropped into a
brown study, and was apparently lost to me and to the rest of the world
during some minutes. Now and then he passed his fingers through his
flossy white hair, to assist his thinking, and meantime he allowed his
breakfast to go on cooling. At last he said:
'It's one of Hans Andersen's beautiful little stories. But it's gone fro
me. Part of it is like this: A child has a caged bird, which it loves
but thoughtlessly neglects. The bird pours out its song unheard and
unheeded; but, in time, hunger and thirst assail the creature, and its
song grows plaintive and feeble and finally ceases--the bird dies. The
child comes, and is smitten to the heart with remorse: then, with bitter
tears and lamentations, it calls its mates, and they bury the bird with
elaborate pomp and the tenderest grief, without knowing, poor things,
that it isn't children only who starve poets to death and then spend
enough on their funerals and monuments to have kept them alive and made
them easy and comfortable. Now--'
But here we were interrupted. About ten that evening I ran across Smith,
and he asked me up to his parlour to help him smoke and drink hot Scotch.
It was a cosy place, with its comfortable chairs, its cheerful lamps, and
its friendly open fire of seasoned olive-wood. To make everything
perfect, there was a muffled booming of the surf outside. After the
second Scotch and much lazy and contented chat, Smith said:
'Perfectly. Go on.'
'A long time ago I was a young artist--a very young artist, in fact--and
I wandered about the country parts of France, sketching here and
sketching there, and was presently joined by a couple of darling young
Frenchmen who were at the same kind of thing that I was doing. We were
as happy as we were poor, or as poor as we were happy--phrase it to suit
yourself. Claude Frere and Carl Boulanger--these are the names of those
boys; dear, dear fellows, and the sunniest spirits that ever laughed at
poverty and had a noble good time in all weathers.
'At last we ran hard aground in a Breton village, and an artist as poor
as ourselves took us in and literally saved us from starving--Francois
Millet--'
'Great? He wasn't any greater than we were, then. He hadn't any fame,
even in his own village; and he was so poor that he hadn't anything to
feed us on but turnips, and even the turnips failed us sometimes. We
four became fast friends, doting friends, inseparables. We painted away
together with all our might, piling up stock, piling up stock, but very
seldom getting rid of any of it. We had lovely times together; but, O my
soul! how we were pinched now and then!
'For a little over two years this went on. At last, one day, Claude
said:
'This struck us as cold. Every face was blank with dismay. We realised
that our circumstances were desperate, now. There was a long silence.
Finally, Millet said with a sigh:
'"No matter, they said it; and it's true, too. Look at your 'Angelus'
there! Will anybody tell me--"
'"When?"
'"Where is he?"
'"Well--and then?"
'"Oh, I know--I know! It was a mistake, and I was a fool. Boys, I meant
for the best; you'll grant me that, and I--"
'"Why, certainly, we know that, bless your dear heart; but don't you be a
fool again."
'"I? I wish somebody would come along and offer us a cabbage for it
--you'd see!"
'"A cabbage! Oh, don't name it--it makes my mouth water. Talk of things
less trying."
'"Boys," said Carl, "do these pictures lack merit? Answer me that."
'"No!"
'"Yes."
'"Of such great and high merit that, if an illustrious name were attached
to them they would sell at splendid prices. Isn't it so?"
'"Why, of course it's so--and we are not joking. But what of it. What
of it? How does that concern us?"
'The lively conversation stopped. The faces were turned inquiringly upon
Carl. What sort of riddle might this be? Where was an illustrious name
to be borrowed? And who was to borrow it?
'"No, I haven't."
'"Yes, you have--you've lost your mind. What do you call rich?"
'"Yes, he has. Carl, privation has been too much for you, and--"
'"No, bandage his heels; his brains have been settling for weeks--I've
noticed it."
'"Shut up!" said Millet, with ostensible severity, "and let the boy have
his say. Now, then--come out with your project, Carl. What is it?"
'"Well, then, by way of preamble I will ask you to note this fact in
human history: that the merit of many a great artist has never been
acknowledged until after he was starved and dead. This has happened so
often that I make bold to found a law upon it. This law: that the merit
of every great unknown and neglected artist must and will be recognised
and his pictures climb to high prices after his death. My project is
this: we must cast lots--one of us must die."
'"Yes, one of us must die, to save the others--and himself. We will cast
lots. The one chosen shall be illustrious, all of us shall be rich.
Hold still, now--hold still; don't interrupt--I tell you I know what I am
talking about. Here is the idea. During the next three months the one
who is to die shall paint with all his might, enlarge his stock all he
can--not pictures, no! skeleton sketches, studies, parts of studies,
fragments of studies, a dozen dabs of the brush on each--meaningless, of
course, but his, with his cipher on them; turn out fifty a day, each to
contain some peculiarity or mannerism easily detectable as his--they're
the things that sell, you know, and are collected at fabulous prices for
the world's museums, after the great man is gone; we'll have a ton of
them ready--a ton! And all that time the rest of us will be busy
supporting the moribund, and working Paris and the dealers--preparations
for the coming event, you know; and when everything is hot and just
right, we'll spring the death on them and have the notorious funeral.
You get the idea?"
'"Not quite? Don't you see? The man doesn't really die; he changes his
name and vanishes; we bury a dummy, and cry over it, with all the world
to help. And I--"
'Now, it will surprise you to know what an easy and comfortable thing we
had. I walked two days before I began business. Then I began to sketch
a villa in the outskirts of a big town--because I saw the proprietor
standing on an upper veranda. He came down to look on--I thought he
would. I worked swiftly, intending to keep him interested. Occasionally
he fired off a little ejaculation of approbation, and by-and-by he spoke
up with enthusiasm, and said I was a master!
'I put down my brush, reached into my satchel, fetched out a Millet, and
pointed to the cipher in the corner. I said, proudly:
'"I suppose you recognise that? Well, he taught me! I should think I
ought to know my trade!"
'"You don't mean to intimate that you don't know the cipher of Francois
Millet!"
'Of course he didn't know that cipher; but he was the gratefullest man
you ever saw, just the same, for being let out of an uncomfortable place
on such easy terms. He said:
'"No! Why, it is Millet's, sure enough! I don't know what I could have
been thinking of. Of course I recognise it now."
'Next, he wanted to buy it; but I said that although I wasn't rich I
wasn't that poor. However, at last, I let him have it for eight hundred
francs.'
'Eight hundred!'
'Yes. Millet would have sold it for a pork chop. Yes, I got eight
hundred francs for that little thing. I wish I could get it back for
eighty thousand. But that time's gone by. I made a very nice picture of
that man's house and I wanted to offer it to him for ten francs, but that
wouldn't answer, seeing I was the pupil of such a master, so I sold it to
him for a hundred. I sent the eight hundred francs straight to Millet
from that town and struck out again next day.
'But I didn't walk--no. I rode. I have ridden ever since. I sold one
picture every day, and never tried to sell two. I always said to my
customer:
'"I am a fool to sell a picture of Francois Millet's at all, for that man
is not going to live three months, and when he dies his pictures can't be
had for love or money."
'I took care to spread that little fact as far as I could, and prepare
the world for the event.
'I take credit to myself for our plan of selling the pictures--it was
mine. I suggested it that last evening when we were laying out our
campaign, and all three of us agreed to give it a good fair trial before
giving it up for some other. It succeeded with all of us. I walked only
two days, Claude walked two--both of afraid to make Millet celebrated too
close to home--but Carl walked only half a day, the bright,
conscienceless rascal, and after that he travelled like a duke.
'Every now and then we got in with a country editor and started an item
around through the press; not an item announcing that a new painter had
been discovered, but an item which let on that everybody knew Francois
Millet; not an item praising him in any way, but merely a word concerning
the present condition of the "master"--sometimes hopeful, sometimes
despondent, but always tinged with fears for the worst. We always marked
these paragraphs, and sent the papers to all the people who had bought
pictures of us.
'Carl was soon in Paris and he worked things with a high hand. He made
friends with the correspondents, and got Millet's condition reported to
England and all over the continent, and America, and everywhere.
'At the end of six weeks from the start, we three met in Paris and called
a halt, and stopped sending back to Millet for additional pictures. The
boom was so high, and everything so ripe, that we saw that it would be a
mistake not to strike now, right away, without waiting any longer. So we
wrote Millet to go to bed and begin to waste away pretty fast, for we
should like him to die in ten days if he could get ready.
'Then we figured up and found that among us we had sold eighty-five small
pictures and studies, and had sixty-nine thousand francs to show for it.
Carl had made the last sale and the most brilliant one of all. He sold
the "Angelus" for twenty-two hundred francs. How we did glorify him!
--not foreseeing that a day was coming by-and-by when France would struggle
to own it and a stranger would capture it for five hundred and fifty
thousand, cash.
'We had a wind-up champagne supper that night, and next day Claude and I
packed up and went off to nurse Millet through his last days and keep
busybodies out of the house and send daily bulletins to Carl in Paris for
publication in the papers of several continents for the information of a
waiting world. The sad end came at last, and Carl was there in time to
help in the final mournful rites.
'You remember that great funeral, and what a stir it made all over the
globe, and how the illustrious of two worlds came to attend it and
testify their sorrow. We four--still inseparable--carried the coffin,
and would allow none to help. And we were right about that, because it
hadn't anything in it but a wax figure, and any other coffin-bearers
would have found fault with the weight. Yes, we same old four, who had
lovingly shared privation together in the old hard times now gone for
ever, carried the cof--'
'Which four?'
'We four--for Millet helped to carry his own coffin. In disguise, you
know. Disguised as a relative--distant relative.'
'Astonishing!'
'But true just the same. Well, you remember how the pictures went up.
Money? We didn't know what to do with it. There's a man in Paris to-day
who owns seventy Millet pictures. He paid us two million francs for
them. And as for the bushels of sketches and studies which Millet
shovelled out during the six weeks that we were on the road, well, it
would astonish you to know the figure we sell them at nowadays--that is,
when we consent to let one go!'
'I can.'
'Do you remember the man I called your attention to in the dining room
to-day? That was Francois Millet.'
'Great--'
'Scott! Yes. For once they didn't starve a genius to death and then put
into other pockets the rewards he should have had himself. This
song-bird was not allowed to pipe out its heart unheard and then be paid
with the cold pomp of a big funeral. We looked out for that.'
In those early days I had already published one little thing ('The
Jumping Frog') in an Eastern paper, but I did not consider that that
counted. In my view, a person who published things in a mere newspaper
could not properly claim recognition as a Literary Person: he must rise
away above that; he must appear in a magazine. He would then be a
Literary Person; also, he would be famous--right away. These two
ambitions were strong upon me. This was in 1866. I prepared my
contribution, and then looked around for the best magazine to go up to
glory in. I selected the most important one in New York. The
contribution was accepted. I signed it 'MARK TWAIN;' for that name had
some currency on the Pacific coast, and it was my idea to spread it all
over the world, now, at this one jump. The article appeared in the
December number, and I sat up a month waiting for the January number; for
that one would contain the year's list of contributors, my name would be
in it, and I should be famous and could give the banquet I was
meditating.
I did not give the banquet. I had not written the 'MARK TWAIN'
distinctly; it was a fresh name to Eastern printers, and they put it
'Mike Swain' or 'MacSwain,' I do not remember which. At any rate, I was
not celebrated and I did not give the banquet. I was a Literary Person,
but that was all--a buried one; buried alive.
I was in the islands to write letters for the weekly edition of the
Sacramento 'Union,' a rich and influential daily journal which hadn't any
use for them, but could afford to spend twenty dollars a week for
nothing. The proprietors were lovable and well-beloved men: long ago
dead, no doubt, but in me there is at least one person who still holds
them in grateful remembrance; for I dearly wanted to see the islands, and
they listened to me and gave me the opportunity when there was but
slender likelihood that it could profit them in any way.
I had been in the islands several months when the survivors arrived. I
was laid up in my room at the time, and unable to walk. Here was a great
occasion to serve my journal, and I not able to take advantage of it.
Necessarily I was in deep trouble. But by good luck his Excellency Anson
Burlingame was there at the time, on his way to take up his post in
China, where he did such good work for the United States. He came and
put me on a stretcher and had me carried to the hospital where the
shipwrecked men were, and I never needed to ask a question. He attended
to all of that himself, and I had nothing to do but make the notes. It
was like him to take that trouble. He was a great man and a great
American, and it was in his fine nature to come down from his high office
and do a friendly turn whenever he could.
We got through with this work at six in the evening. I took no dinner,
for there was no time to spare if I would beat the other correspondents.
I spent four hours arranging the notes in their proper order, then wrote
all night and beyond it; with this result: that I had a very long and
detailed account of the 'Hornet' episode ready at nine in the morning,
while the other correspondents of the San Francisco journals had nothing
but a brief outline report--for they didn't sit up. The now-and-then
schooner was to sail for San Francisco about nine; when I reached the
dock she was free forward and was just casting off her stern-line. My
fat envelope was thrown by a strong hand, and fell on board all right,
and my victory was a safe thing. All in due time the ship reached San
Francisco, but it was my complete report which made the stir and was
telegraphed to the New York papers, by Mr. Cash; he was in charge of the
Pacific bureau of the 'New York Herald' at the time.
The 'Hornet' survivors reached the Sandwich Islands the 15th of June.
They were mere skinny skeletons; their clothes hung limp about them and
fitted them no better than a flag fits the flag-staff in a calm. But
they were well nursed in the hospital; the people of Honolulu kept them
supplied with all the dainties they could need; they gathered strength
fast, and were presently nearly as good as new. Within a fortnight the
most of them took ship for San Francisco; that is, if my dates have not
gone astray in my memory. I went in the same ship, a sailing-vessel.
Captain Mitchell of the 'Hornet' was along; also the only passengers the
'Hornet' had carried. These were two young men from Stamford,
Connecticut--brothers: Samuel and Henry Ferguson. The 'Hornet' was a
clipper of the first class and a fast sailer; the young men's quarters
were roomy and comfortable, and were well stocked with books, and also
with canned meats and fruits to help out the ship-fare with; and when the
ship cleared from New York harbour in the first week of January there was
promise that she would make quick and pleasant work of the fourteen or
fifteen thousand miles in front of her. As soon as the cold latitudes
were left behind and the vessel entered summer weather, the voyage became
a holiday picnic. The ship flew southward under a cloud of sail which
needed no attention, no modifying or change of any kind, for days
together. The young men read, strolled the ample deck, rested and
drowsed in the shade of the canvas, took their meals with the captain;
and when the day was done they played dummy whist with him till bed-time.
After the snow and ice and tempests of the Horn, the ship bowled
northward into summer weather again, and the trip was a picnic once more.
Until the early morning of the 3rd of May. Computed position of the ship
112 degrees 10 minutes longitude, latitude 2 degrees above the equator;
no wind, no sea--dead calm; temperature of the atmosphere, tropical,
blistering, unimaginable by one who has not been roasted in it. There
was a cry of fire. An unfaithful sailor had disobeyed the rules and gone
into the booby-hatch with an open light to draw some varnish from a cask.
The proper result followed, and the vessel's hours were numbered.
There was not much time to spare, but the captain made the most of it.
The three boats were launched--long-boat and two quarter-boats. That the
time was very short and the hurry and excitement considerable is
indicated by the fact that in launching the boats a hole was stove in the
side of one of them by some sort of collision, and an oar driven through
the side of another. The captain's first care was to have four sick
sailors brought up and placed on deck out of harm's way--among them a
'Portyghee.' This man had not done a day's work on the voyage, but had
lain in his hammock four months nursing an abscess. When we were taking
notes in the Honolulu hospital and a sailor told this to Mr. Burlingame,
the third mate, who was lying near, raised his head with an effort, and
in a weak voice made this correction--with solemnity and feeling:
Any provisions that lay handy were gathered up by the men and two
passengers and brought and dumped on the deck where the 'Portyghee' lay;
then they ran for more. The sailor who was telling this to Mr.
Burlingame added:
'We pulled together thirty-two days' rations for the thirty-one men that
way.'
The third mate lifted his head again and made another correction--with
bitterness:
The fire spread with great rapidity. The smoke and flame drove the men
back, and they had to stop their incomplete work of fetching provisions,
and take to the boats with only ten days' rations secured.
The captain and the two passengers kept diaries. On our voyage to San
Francisco we ran into a calm in the middle of the Pacific, and did not
move a rod during fourteen days; this gave me a chance to copy the
diaries. Samuel Ferguson's is the fullest; I will draw upon it now.
When the following paragraph was written the doomed ship was about one
hundred and twenty days out from port, and all hands were putting in the
lazy time about as usual, as no one was forecasting disaster.
Next day's entry records the disaster. The three boats got away, retired
to a short distance, and stopped. The two injured ones were leaking
badly; some of the men were kept busy baling, others patched the holes as
well as they could. The captain, the two passengers, and eleven men were
in the long-boat, with a share of the provisions and water, and with no
room to spare, for the boat was only twenty-one feet long, six wide, and
three deep. The chief mate and eight men were in one of the small boats,
the second mate and seven men in the other. The passengers had saved no
clothing but what they had on, excepting their overcoats. The ship,
clothed in flame and sending up a vast column of black smoke into the
sky, made a grand picture in the solitudes of the sea, and hour after
hour the outcasts sat and watched it. Meantime the captain ciphered on
the immensity of the distance that stretched between him and the nearest
available land, and then scaled the rations down to meet the emergency;
half a biscuit for dinner; one biscuit and some canned meat for dinner;
half a biscuit for tea; a few swallows of water for each meal. And so
hunger began to gnaw while the ship was still burning.
[Diary entry] May 4. The ship burned all night very brightly, and
hopes are that some ship has seen the light and is bearing down upon
us. None seen, however, this forenoon, so we have determined to go
together north and a little west to some islands in 18 degrees or 19
degrees north latitude and 114 degrees to 115 degrees west
longitude, hoping in the meantime to be picked up by some ship. The
ship sank suddenly at about 5 A.M. We find the sun very hot and
scorching, but all try to keep out of it as much as we can.
They did a quite natural thing now: waited several hours for that
possible ship that might have seen the light to work her slow way to them
through the nearly dead calm. Then they gave it up and set about their
plans. If you will look at the map you will say that their course could
be easily decided. Albemarle Island (Galapagos group) lies straight
eastward nearly a thousand miles; the islands referred to in the diary as
'some islands' (Revillagigedo Islands) lie, as they think, in some widely
uncertain region northward about one thousand miles and westward one
hundred or one hundred and fifty miles. Acapulco, on the Mexican coast,
lies about north-east something short of one thousand miles. You will
say random rocks in the ocean are not what is wanted; let them strike for
Acapulco and the solid continent. That does look like the rational
course, but one presently guesses from the diaries that the thing would
have been wholly irrational--indeed, suicidal. If the boats struck for
Albemarle they would be in the doldrums all the way; and that means a
watery perdition, with winds which are wholly crazy, and blow from all
points of the compass at once and also perpendicularly. If the boats
tried for Acapulco they would get out of the doldrums when half-way
there--in case they ever got half-way--and then they would be in
lamentable case, for there they would meet the north-east trades coming
down in their teeth, and these boats were so rigged that they could not
sail within eight points of the wind. So they wisely started northward,
with a slight slant to the west. They had but ten days' short allowance
of food; the long-boat was towing the others; they could not depend on
making any sort of definite progress in the doldrums, and they had four
or five hundred miles of doldrums in front of them yet. They are the
real equator, a tossing, roaring, rainy belt, ten or twelve hundred miles
broad, which girdles the globe.
It rained hard the first night and all got drenched, but they filled up
their water-butt. The brothers were in the stern with the captain, who
steered. The quarters were cramped; no one got much sleep. 'Kept on our
course till squalls headed us off.'
Stormy and squally the next morning, with drenching rains. A heavy and
dangerous 'cobbling' sea. One marvels how such boats could live in it.
Is it called a feat of desperate daring when one man and a dog cross the
Atlantic in a boat the size of a long-boat, and indeed it is; but this
long-boat was overloaded with men and other plunder, and was only three
feet deep. 'We naturally thought often of all at home, and were glad to
remember that it was Sacrament Sunday, and that prayers would go up from
our friends for us, although they know not our peril.'
The captain got not even a cat-nap during the first three days and
nights, but he got a few winks of sleep the fourth night. 'The worst sea
yet.' About ten at night the captain changed his course and headed
east-north-east, hoping to make Clipperton Rock. If he failed, no
matter; he would be in a better position to make those other islands. I
will mention here that he did not find that rock.
On May 8 no wind all day; sun blistering hot; they take to the oars.
Plenty of dolphins, but they couldn't catch any. 'I think we are all
beginning to realise more and more the awful situation we are in.' 'It
often takes a ship a week to get through the doldrums; how much longer,
then, such a craft as ours?' 'We are so crowded that we cannot stretch
ourselves out for a good sleep, but have to take it any way we can get
it.'
Of course this feature will grow more and more trying, but it will be
human nature to cease to set it down; there will be five weeks of it yet
--we must try to remember that for the diarist; it will make our beds the
softer.
May 9 the sun gives him a warning: 'Looking with both eyes, the horizon
crossed thus +.' 'Henry keeps well, but broods over our troubles more
than I wish he did.' They caught two dolphins; they tasted well. 'The
captain believed the compass out of the way, but the long-invisible north
star came out--a welcome sight--and endorsed the compass.'
May 10, 'latitude 7 degrees 0 minutes 3 seconds N., longitude 111 degrees
32 minutes W.' So they have made about three hundred miles of northing
in the six days since they left the region of the lost ship. 'Drifting
in calms all day.' And baking hot, of course; I have been down there,
and I remember that detail. 'Even as the captain says, all romance has
long since vanished, and I think the most of us are beginning to look the
fact of our awful situation full in the face.' 'We are making but little
headway on our course.' Bad news from the rearmost boat: the men are
improvident; 'they have eaten up all of the canned meats brought from the
ship, and are now growing discontented.' Not so with the chief mate's
people--they are evidently under the eye of a man.
Under date of May 11: 'Standing still! or worse; we lost more last night
than we made yesterday.' In fact, they have lost three miles of the
three hundred of northing they had so laboriously made. 'The cock that
was rescued and pitched into the boat while the ship was on fire still
lives, and crows with the breaking of dawn, cheering us a good deal.'
What has he been living on for a week? Did the starving men feed him
from their dire poverty? 'The second mate's boat out of water again,
showing that they over-drink their allowance. The captain spoke pretty
sharply to them.' It is true: I have the remark in my old note-book; I
got it of the third mate in the hospital at Honolulu. But there is not
room for it here, and it is too combustible, anyway. Besides, the third
mate admired it, and what he admired he was likely to enhance.
They were still watching hopefully for ships. The captain was a
thoughtful man, and probably did not disclose on them that that was
substantially a waste of time. 'In this latitude the horizon is filled
with little upright clouds that look very much like ships.' Mr. Ferguson
saved three bottles of brandy from his private stores when he left the
ship, and the liquor came good in these days. 'The captain serves out
two tablespoonfuls of brandy and water--half and half--to our crew.' He
means the watch that is on duty; they stood regular watches--four hours
on and four off. The chief mate was an excellent officer--a
self-possessed, resolute, fine, all-round man. The diarist makes the
following note--there is character in it: 'I offered one bottle of brandy
to the chief mate, but he declined, saying he could keep the after-boat
quiet, and we had not enough for all.'
That boy's diary is of the economical sort that a person might properly
be expected to keep in such circumstances--and be forgiven for the
economy, too. His brother, perishing of consumption, hunger, thirst,
blazing heat, drowning rains, loss of sleep, lack of exercise, was
persistently faithful and circumstantial with his diary from the first
day to the last--an instance of noteworthy fidelity and resolution. In
spite of the tossing and plunging boat he wrote it close and fine, in a
hand as easy to read as print. They can't seem to get north of 7 degrees
N.; they are still there the next day:
[Diary entry] May 12. A good rain last night, and we caught a good
deal, though not enough to fill up our tank, pails, &c. Our object
is to get out of these doldrums, but it seems as if we cannot do it.
To-day we have had it very variable, and hope we are on the northern
edge, thought we are not much above 7 degrees. This morning we all
thought we had made out a sail; but it was one of those deceiving
clouds. Rained a good deal to-day, making all hands wet and
uncomfortable; we filled up pretty nearly all our water-pots,
however. I hope we may have a fine night, for the captain certainly
wants rest, and while there is any danger of squalls, or danger of
any kind, he is always on hand. I never would have believed that
open boats such as ours, with their loads, could live in some of the
seas we have had.
During the night, 12th-13th, 'the cry of A SHIP! brought us to our feet.'
It seemed to be the glimmer of a vessel's signal-lantern rising out of
the curve of the sea. There was a season of breathless hope while they
stood watching, with their hands shading their eyes, and their hearts in
their throats; then the promise failed: the light was a rising star. It
is a long time ago--thirty-two years--and it doesn't matter now, yet one
is sorry for their disappointment. 'Thought often of those at home
to-day, and of the disappointment they will feel next Sunday at not
hearing from us by telegraph from San Francisco.' It will be many weeks
yet before the telegram is received, and it will come as a thunderclap of
joy then, and with the seeming of a miracle, for it will raise from the
grave men mourned as dead. 'To-day our rations were reduced to a quarter
of a biscuit a meal, with about half a pint of water.' This is on May
13, with more than a month of voyaging in front of them yet! However, as
they do not know that, 'we are all feeling pretty cheerful.'
That night and next day, light and baffling winds and but little
progress. Hard to bear, that persistent standing still, and the food
wasting away. 'Everything in a perfect sop; and all so cramped, and no
change of clothes.' Soon the sun comes out and roasts them. 'Joe caught
another dolphin to-day; in his maw we found a flying-fish and two
skipjacks.' There is an event, now, which rouses an enthusiasm of hope:
a land-bird arrives! It rests on the yard for awhile, and they can look
at it all they like, and envy it, and thank it for its message. As a
subject of talk it is beyond price--a fresh new topic for tongues tired
to death of talking upon a single theme: Shall we ever see the land
again; and when? Is the bird from Clipperton Rock? They hope so; and
they take heart of grace to believe so. As it turned out the bird had no
message; it merely came to mock.
May 16, 'the cock still lives, and daily carols forth his praise.' It
will be a rainy night, 'but I do not care if we can fill up our
water-butts.'
From Captain Mitchell's log for this day: 'Only half a bushel of
bread-crumbs left.' (And a month to wander the seas yet.')
It rained all night and all day; everybody uncomfortable. Now came a
sword-fish chasing a bonito; and the poor thing, seeking help and
friends, took refuge under the rudder. The big sword-fish kept hovering
around, scaring everybody badly. The men's mouths watered for him, for
he would have made a whole banquet; but no one dared to touch him, of
course, for he would sink a boat promptly if molested. Providence
protected the poor bonito from the cruel sword-fish. This was just and
right. Providence next befriended the shipwrecked sailors: they got the
bonito. This was also just and right. But in the distribution of
mercies the sword-fish himself got overlooked. He now went away; to muse
over these subtleties, probably. The men in all the boats seem pretty
well; the feeblest of the sick ones (not able for a long time to stand
his watch on board the ship) 'is wonderfully recovered.' This is the
third mate's detected 'Portyghee' that raised the family of abscesses.
Passed a most awful night. Rained hard nearly all the time, and
blew in squalls, accompanied by terrific thunder and lightning from
all points of the compass.--Henry's Log.
Latitude, May 18, 11 degrees 11 minutes. So they have averaged but forty
miles of northing a day during the fortnight. Further talk of
separating. 'Too bad, but it must be done for the safety of the whole.'
'At first I never dreamed, but now hardly shut my eyes for a cat-nap
without conjuring up something or other--to be accounted for by weakness,
I suppose.' But for their disaster they think they would be arriving in
San Francisco about this time. 'I should have liked to send B---the
telegram for her birthday.' This was a young sister.
On the 19th the captain called up the quarter-boats and said one would
have to go off on its own hook. The long-boat could no longer tow both
of them. The second mate refused to go, but the chief mate was ready; in
fact, he was always ready when there was a man's work to the fore. He
took the second mate's boat; six of its crew elected to remain, and two
of his own crew came with him (nine in the boat, now, including himself).
He sailed away, and toward sunset passed out of sight. The diarist was
sorry to see him go. It was natural; one could have better spared the
'Portyghee.' After thirty-two years I find my prejudice against this
'Portyghee' reviving. His very looks have long passed out of my memory;
but no matter, I am coming to hate him as religiously as ever. 'Water
will now be a scarce article, for as we get out of the doldrums we shall
get showers only now and then in the trades. This life is telling
severely on my strength. Henry holds out first-rate.' Henry did not
start well, but under hardships he improved straight along.
May 21, they strike the trades at last! The second mate catches three
more boobies, and gives the long-boat one. Dinner 'half a can of
mincemeat divided up and served around, which strengthened us somewhat.'
They have to keep a man bailing all the time; the hole knocked in the
boat when she was launched from the burning ship was never efficiently
mended. 'Heading about north-west now.' They hope they have easting
enough to make some of these indefinite isles. Failing that, they think
they will be in a better position to be picked up. It was an infinitely
slender chance, but the captain probably refrained from mentioning that.
[Diary entry] May 22. Last night wind headed us off, so that part
of the time we had to steer east-south-east and then
west-north-west, and so on. This morning we were all startled by a
cry of 'SAIL HO!' Sure enough, we could see it! And for a time we
cut adrift from the second mate's boat, and steered so as to
attract its attention. This was about half-past five A.M. After
sailing in a state of high excitement for almost twenty minutes we
made it out to be the chief mate's boat. Of course we were glad to
see them and have them report all well; but still it was a bitter
disappointment to us all. Now that we are in the trades it seems
impossible to make northing enough to strike the isles. We have
determined to do the best we can, and get in the route of vessels.
Such being the determination, it became necessary to cast off the
other boat, which, after a good deal of unpleasantness, was done,
we again dividing water and stores, and taking Cox into our boat.
This makes our number fifteen. The second mate's crew wanted to
all get in with us, and cast the other boat adrift. It was a very
painful separation.
So these isles that they have struggled for so long and so hopefully have
to be given up. What with lying birds that come to mock, and isles that
are but a dream, and 'visions of ships that come to naught,' it is a
pathetic time they are having, with much heartbreak in it. It was odd
that the vanished boat, three days lost to sight in that vast solitude,
should appear again. But it brought Cox--we can't be certain why. But
if it hadn't, the diarist would never have seen the land again.
The next day was 'a good day for seeing a ship.' But none was seen. The
diarist 'still feels pretty well,' though very weak; his brother Henry
'bears up and keeps his strength the best of any on board.' 'I do not
feel despondent at all, for I fully trust that the Almighty will hear our
and the home prayers, and He who suffers not a sparrow to fall sees and
cares for us, His creatures.'
Considering the situation and circumstances, the record for next day,
May 29, is one which has a surprise in it for those dull people who think
that nothing but medicines and doctors can cure the sick. A little
starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best
medicines and the best doctors. I do not mean a restricted diet; I mean
total abstention from food for one or two days. I speak from experience;
starvation has been my cold and fever doctor for fifteen years, and has
accomplished a cure in all instances. The third mate told me in Honolulu
that the 'Portyghee' had lain in his hammock for months, raising his
family of abscesses and feeding like a cannibal. We have seen that in
spite of dreadful weather, deprivation of sleep, scorching, drenching,
and all manner of miseries, thirteen days of starvation 'wonderfully
recovered' him. There were four sailors down sick when the ship was
burned. Twenty-five days of pitiless starvation have followed, and now
we have this curious record: 'All the men are hearty and strong; even the
ones that were down sick are well, except poor Peter.' When I wrote an
article some months ago urging temporary abstention from food as a remedy
for an inactive appetite and for disease, I was accused of jesting, but I
was in earnest. 'We are all wonderfully well and strong, comparatively
speaking.' On this day the starvation regime drew its belt a couple of
buckle-holes tighter: the bread ration was reduced from the usual piece
of cracker the size of a silver dollar to the half of that, and one meal
was abolished from the daily three. This will weaken the men physically,
but if there are any diseases of an ordinary sort left in them they will
disappear.
And fifteen starved men to live on it while they creep and crawl six
hundred and fifty miles. 'Somehow I feel much encouraged by this change
of course (west by north) which we have made to-day.' Six hundred and
fifty miles on a hatful of provisions. Let us be thankful, even after
thirty-two years, that they are mercifully ignorant of the fact that it
isn't six hundred and fifty that they must creep on the hatful, but
twenty-two hundred!
The last day of May is come. And now there is a disaster to report:
think of it, reflect upon it, and try to understand how much it means,
when you sit down with your family and pass your eye over your
breakfast-table. Yesterday there were three pints of bread-crumbs; this
morning the little bag is found open and some of the crumbs are missing.
'We dislike to suspect any one of such a rascally act, but there is no
question that this grave crime has been committed. Two days will
certainly finish the remaining morsels. God grant us strength to reach
the American group!' The third mate told me in Honolulu that in these
days the men remembered with bitterness that the 'Portyghee' had devoured
twenty-two days' rations while he lay waiting to be transferred from the
burning ship, and that now they cursed him and swore an oath that if it
came to cannibalism he should be the first to suffer for the rest.
[Diary entry] The captain has lost his glasses, and therefore he
cannot read our pocket prayer-books as much as I think he would
like, though he is not familiar with them.
Further of the captain: 'He is a good man, and has been most kind to us
--almost fatherly. He says that if he had been offered the command of the
ship sooner he should have brought his two daughters with him.' It makes
one shudder yet to think how narrow an escape it was.
The two meals (rations) a day are as follows: fourteen raisins and a
piece of cracker the size of a penny for tea; a gill of water, and a
piece of ham and a piece of bread, each the size of a penny, for
breakfast.--Captain's Log.
[Diary entry] June 1. Last night and to-day sea very high and
cobbling, breaking over and making us all wet and cold. Weather
squally, and there is no doubt that only careful management--with
God's protecting care--preserved us through both the night and the
day; and really it is most marvellous how every morsel that passes
our lips is blessed to us. It makes me think daily of the miracle
of the loaves and fishes. Henry keeps up wonderfully, which is a
great consolation to me. I somehow have great confidence, and hope
that our afflictions will soon be ended, though we are running
rapidly across the track of both outward and inward bound vessels,
and away from them; our chief hope is a whaler, man-of-war, or some
Australian ship. The isles we are steering for are put down in
Bowditch, but on my map are said to be doubtful. God grant they may
be there!
Doubtful! It was worse than that. A week later they sailed straight
over them.
Nothing left but a little piece of ham and a gill of water, all
around.--Captain's Log.
They are down to one meal a day now--such as it is--and fifteen hundred
miles to crawl yet! And now the horrors deepen, and, though they escaped
actual mutiny, the attitude of the men became alarming. Now we seem to
see why that curious incident happened, so long ago; I mean Cox's return,
after he had been far away and out of sight several days in the chief
mate's boat. If he had not come back the captain and the two young
passengers might have been slain, now, by these sailors, who were
becoming crazed through their sufferings.
NOTE SECRETLY PASSED BY HENRY TO HIS BROTHER:
REPLY:
SECOND NOTE:
I guess so, and very likely on...; but there is no telling... and
Cox are certain. There is nothing definite said or hinted as yet,
as I understand Cox; but starving men are the same as maniacs. It
would be well to keep a watch on your pistol, so as to have it and
the cartridges safe from theft.
Henry's Log, June 6. Passed some sea-weed and something that looked
like the trunk of an old tree, but no birds; beginning to be afraid
islands not there. To-day it was said to the captain, in the
hearing of all, that some of the men would not shrink, when a man
was dead, from using the flesh, though they would not kill.
Horrible! God give us all full use of our reason, and spare us from
such things! 'From plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and
murder, and from sudden death, good Lord, deliver us!'
Nothing is now left which by any flattery can be called food. But they
must manage somehow for five days more, for at noon they have still eight
hundred miles to go. It is a race for life now.
Sunday, June 10. Our ham-bone has given us a taste of food to-day,
and we have got left a little meat and the remainder of the bone for
tomorrow. Certainly, never was there such a sweet knuckle-one, or
one that was so thoroughly appreciated .... I do not know that I
feel any worse than I did last Sunday, notwithstanding the reduction
of diet; and I trust that we may all have strength given us to
sustain the sufferings and hardships of the coming week. We
estimate that we are within seven hundred miles of the Sandwich
Islands, and that our average, daily, is somewhat over a hundred
miles, so that our hopes have some foundation in reason. Heaven
send we may all live to see land!
June 11. Ate the meat and rind of our ham-bone, and have the bone
and the greasy cloth from around the ham left to eat to-morrow. God
send us birds or fish, and let us not perish of hunger, or be
brought to the dreadful alternative of feeding on human flesh! As I
feel now, I do not think anything could persuade me; but you cannot
tell what you will do when you are reduced by hunger and your mind
wandering. I hope and pray we can make out to reach the islands
before we get to this strait; but we have one or two desperate men
aboard, though they are quiet enough now. IT IS MY FIRM TRUST AND
BELIEF THAT WE ARE GOING TO BE SAVED.
June 13. The ham-rags are not quite all gone yet, and the
boot-legs, we find, are very palatable after we get the salt out of
them. A little smoke, I think, does some little good; but I don't
know.
June 14. Hunger does not pain us much, but we are dreadfully weak.
Our water is getting frightfully low. God grant we may see land
soon! NOTHING TO EAT, but feel better than I did yesterday. Toward
evening saw a magnificent rainbow--THE FIRST WE HAD SEEN. Captain
said, 'Cheer up, boys; it's a prophecy--IT'S THE BOW OF PROMISE!'
June 15. God be for ever praised for His infinite mercy! LAND IN
SIGHT! rapidly neared it and soon were SURE of it .... Two noble
Kanakas swam out and took the boat ashore. We were joyfully
received by two white men--Mr. Jones and his steward Charley--and a
crowd of native men, women, and children. They treated us
splendidly--aided us, and carried us up the bank, and brought us
water, poi, bananas, and green coconuts; but the white men took care
of us and prevented those who would have eaten too much from doing
so. Everybody overjoyed to see us, and all sympathy expressed in
faces, deeds, and words. We were then helped up to the house; and
help we needed. Mr. Jones and Charley are the only white men here.
Treated us splendidly. Gave us first about a teaspoonful of spirits
in water, and then to each a cup of warm tea, with a little bread.
Takes EVERY care of us. Gave us later another cup of tea, and bread
the same, and then let us go to rest. IT IS THE HAPPIEST DAY OF MY
LIFE.... God in His mercy has heard our prayer.... Everybody is so
kind. Words cannot tell.
June 16. Mr. Jones gave us a delightful bed, and we surely had a
good night's rest; but not sleep--we were too happy to sleep; would
keep the reality and not let it turn to a delusion--dreaded that we
might wake up and find ourselves in the boat again.
The boat came near to being wrecked at the last. As it approached the
shore the sail was let go, and came down with a run; then the captain saw
that he was drifting swiftly toward an ugly reef, and an effort was made
to hoist the sail again; but it could not be done; the men's strength was
wholly exhausted; they could not even pull an oar. They were helpless,
and death imminent. It was then that they were discovered by the two
Kanakas who achieved the rescue. They swam out and manned the boat, and
piloted her through a narrow and hardly noticeable break in the reef--the
only break in it in a stretch of thirty-five miles! The spot where the
landing was made was the only one in that stretch where footing could
have been found on the shore; everywhere else precipices came sheer down
into forty fathoms of water. Also, in all that stretch this was the only
spot where anybody lived.
Within ten days after the landing all the men but one were up and
creeping about. Properly, they ought to have killed themselves with the
'food' of the last few days--some of them, at any rate--men who had
freighted their stomachs with strips of leather from old boots and with
chips from the butter cask; a freightage which they did not get rid of by
digestion, but by other means. The captain and the two passengers did
not eat strips and chips, as the sailors did, but scraped the
boot-leather and the wood, and made a pulp of the scrapings by moistening
them with water. The third mate told me that the boots were old and full
of holes; then added thoughtfully, 'but the holes digested the best.'
Speaking of digestion, here is a remarkable thing, and worth nothing:
during this strange voyage, and for a while afterward on shore, the
bowels of some of the men virtually ceased from their functions; in some
cases there was no action for twenty and thirty days, and in one case for
forty-four! Sleeping also came to be rare. Yet the men did very well
without it. During many days the captain did not sleep at all
--twenty-one, I think, on one stretch.
When the landing was made, all the men were successfully protected from
over-eating except the 'Portyghee;' he escaped the watch and ate an
incredible number of bananas: a hundred and fifty-two, the third mate
said, but this was undoubtedly an exaggeration; I think it was a hundred
and fifty-one. He was already nearly half full of leather; it was
hanging out of his ears. (I do not state this on the third mate's
authority, for we have seen what sort of a person he was; I state it on
my own.) The 'Portyghee' ought to have died, of course, and even now it
seems a pity that he didn't; but he got well, and as early as any of
them; and all full of leather, too, the way he was, and butter-timber and
handkerchiefs and bananas. Some of the men did eat handkerchiefs in
those last days, also socks; and he was one of them.
It is to the credit of the men that they did not kill the rooster that
crowed so gallantly mornings. He lived eighteen days, and then stood up
and stretched his neck and made a brave, weak effort to do his duty once
more, and died in the act. It is a picturesque detail; and so is that
rainbow, too--the only one seen in the forty-three days,--raising its
triumphal arch in the skies for the sturdy fighters to sail under to
victory and rescue.
For a time it was hoped that the two quarter-boats would presently be
heard of, but this hope suffered disappointment. They went down with all
on board, no doubt, not even sparing that knightly chief mate.
The authors of the diaries allowed me to copy them exactly as they were
written, and the extracts that I have given are without any smoothing
over or revision. These diaries are finely modest and unaffected, and
with unconscious and unintentional art they rise toward the climax with
graduated and gathering force and swing and dramatic intensity; they
sweep you along with a cumulative rush, and when the cry rings out at
last, 'Land in sight!' your heart is in your mouth, and for a moment you
think it is you that have been saved. The last two paragraphs are not
improvable by anybody's art; they are literary gold; and their very
pauses and uncompleted sentences have in them an eloquence not reachable
by any words.
[3] It was at this time discovered that the crazed sailors had gotten the
delusion that the captain had a million dollars in gold concealed aft,
and they were conspiring to kill him and the two passengers and seize it.
--M.T.
AT THE APPETITE-CURE
And there are plenty of other health resorts at your service and
convenient to get at from Vienna; charming places, all of them; Vienna
sits in the centre of a beautiful world of mountains with now and then a
lake and forests; in fact, no other city is so fortunately situated.
'At noon.'
'Next to nothing.'
The doctor considered awhile, then got out a long menu and ran his eye
slowly down it.
'I think,' said he, 'that what you need to eat is--but here, choose for
yourself.'
'Why not?'
'Why not? Because--why, doctor, for months I have seldom been able to
endure anything more substantial than omelettes and custards. These
unspeakable dishes of yours--'
'Oh, you will come to like them. They are very good. And you must eat
them. It is a rule of the place, and is strict. I cannot permit any
departure from it.'
I said smiling: 'Well, then, doctor, you will have to permit the
departure of the patient. I am going.'
He looked hurt, and said in a way which changed the aspect of things:
'I am sure you would not do me that injustice. I accepted you in good
faith--you will not shame that confidence. This appetite-cure is my
whole living. If you should go forth from it with the sort of appetite
which you now have, it could become known, and you can see, yourself,
that people would say my cure failed in your case and hence can fail in
other cases. You will not go; you will not do me this hurt.'
'That is right. I was sure you would not go; it would take the food from
my family's mouths.'
'They? My family?' His eyes were full of gentle wonder. 'Of course
not.'
'Certainly not.'
'I see. It's another case of a physician who doesn't take his own
medicine.'
'I don't need it. It is six hours since you lunched. Will you have
supper now--or later?'
'I am not hungry, but now is as good a time as any, and I would like to
be done with it and have it off my mind. It is about my usual time, and
regularity is commanded by all the authorities. Yes, I will try to
nibble a little now--I wish a light horsewhipping would answer instead.'
'Wait just a moment before you finally decide. There is another rule.
If you choose now, the order will be filled at once; but if you wait, you
will have to await my pleasure. You cannot get a dish from that entire
bill until I consent.'
'All right. Show me to my room, and send the cook to bed; there is not
going to be any hurry.'
The professor took me up one flight of stairs and showed me into a most
inviting and comfortable apartment consisting of parlour, bedchamber, and
bathroom.
The front windows looked out over a far-reaching spread of green glades
and valleys, and tumbled hills clothed with forests--a noble solitude
unvexed by the fussy world. In the parlour were many shelves filled with
books. The professor said he would now leave me to myself; and added:
'Smoke and read as much as you please, drink all the water you like.
When you get hungry, ring and give your order, and I will decide whether
it shall be filled or not. Yours is a stubborn, bad case, and I think
the first fourteen dishes in the bill are each and all too delicate for
its needs. I ask you as a favour to restrain yourself and not call for
them.'
I said it with bitterness, for I felt outraged by this calm, cold talk
over these heartless new engines of assassination. The doctor looked
grieved, but not offended. He laid the bill of fare of the commode at my
bed's head, 'so that it would be handy,' and said:
'Yours is not the worst case I have encountered, by any means; still it
is a bad one and requires robust treatment; therefore I shall be
gratified if you will restrain yourself and skip down to No. 15 and begin
with that.'
Then he left me and I began to undress, for I was dog-tired and very
sleepy. I slept fifteen hours and woke up finely refreshed at ten the
next morning. Vienna coffee! It was the first thing I thought of--that
unapproachable luxury--that sumptuous coffee-house coffee, compared with
which all other European coffee and all American hotel coffee is mere
fluid poverty. I rang, and ordered it; also Vienna bread, that delicious
invention. The servant spoke through the wicket in the door and said
--but you know what he said. He referred me to the bill of fare.
I allowed him to go--I had no further use for him.
After the bath I dressed and started for a walk, and got as far as the
door. It was locked on the outside. I rang, and the servant came and
explained that it was another rule. The seclusion of the patient was
required until after the first meal. I had not been particularly anxious
to get out before; but it was different now. Being locked in makes a
person wishful to get out. I soon began to find it difficult to put in
the time. At two o'clock I had been twenty-six hours without food. I
had been growing hungry for some time; I recognised that I was not only
hungry now, but hungry with a strong adjective in front of it. Yet I was
not hungry enough to face the bill of fare.
I must put in the time somehow. I would read and smoke. I did it; hour
by hour. The books were all of one breed--shipwrecks; people lost in
deserts; people shut up in caved-in mines; people starving in besieged
cities. I read about all the revolting dishes that ever famishing men
had stayed their hunger with. During the first hours these things
nauseated me: hours followed in which they did not so affect me; still
other hours followed in which I found myself smacking my lips over some
tolerably infernal messes. When I had been without food forty-five hours
I ran eagerly to the bell and ordered the second dish in the bill, which
was a sort of dumplings containing a compost made of caviar and tar.
It was refused me. During the next fifteen hours I visited the bell
every now and then and ordered a dish that was further down the list.
Always a refusal. But I was conquering prejudice after prejudice, right
along; I was making sure progress; I was creeping up on No. 15 with
deadly certainty, and my heart beat faster and faster, my hopes rose
higher and higher.
At last when food had not passed my lips for sixty hours, victory was
mine, and I ordered No. 15:
'Soft-boiled spring chicken--in the egg; six dozen, hot and fragrant!'
In fifteen minutes it was there; and the doctor along with it, rubbing
his hands with joy. He said with great excitement:
'It's a cure, it's a cure! I knew I could do it. Dear sir, my grand
system never failed--never. You've got your appetite back--you know you
have; say it and make me happy.'
'Never was anything so delicious in the world; and yet as a rule I don't
care for game. But don't interrupt me, don't--I can't spare my mouth, I
really can't.'
II
At the end of the first week eating had ceased, nibbling had taken its
place. The passengers came to the table, but it was partly to put in the
time, and partly because the wisdom of the ages commanded them to be
regular in their meals. They were tired of the coarse and monotonous
fare, and took no interest in it, had no appetite for it. All day and
every day they roamed the ship half hungry, plagued by their gnawing
stomachs, moody, untalkative, miserable. Among them were three confirmed
dyspeptics. These became shadows in the course of three weeks. There
was also a bed-ridden invalid; he lived on boiled rice; he could not look
at the regular dishes.
Now came shipwrecks and life in open boats, with the usual paucity of
food. Provisions ran lower and lower. The appetites improved, then.
When nothing was left but raw ham and the ration of that was down to two
ounces a day per person, the appetites were perfect. At the end of
fifteen days the dyspeptics, the invalid, and the most delicate ladies in
the party were chewing sailor-boots in ecstasy, and only complaining
because the supply of them was limited. Yet these were the same people
who couldn't endure the ship's tedious corned beef and sour kraut and
other crudities. They were rescued by an English vessel. Within ten
days the whole fifteen were in as good condition as they had been when
the shipwreck occurred.
'Yes.'
'But you don't. You hesitate. You don't rise to the importance of it.
I will say it again--with emphasis--not one of them suffered any damage.'
'Nothing of the kind. It was perfectly natural. There was no reason why
they should suffer damage. They were undergoing Nature's Appetite-Cure,
the best and wisest in the world.'
'Why do you ask? You know it yourself. As regards his health--and the
rest of the things--the average man is what his environment and his
superstitions have made him; and their function is to make him an ass.
He can't add up three or four new circumstances together and perceive
what they mean; it is beyond him. He is not capable of observing for
himself; he has to get everything at second-hand. If what are miscalled
the lower animals were as silly as man is, they would all perish from the
earth in a year.'
'Not a sign of it. They went to their regular meals in the English ship,
and pretty soon they were nibbling again--nibbling, appetiteless,
disgusted with the food, moody, miserable, half hungry, their outraged
stomachs cursing and swearing and whining and supplicating all day long.
And in vain, for they were the stomachs of fools.'
'Quite simple. Don't eat until you are hungry. If the food fails to
taste good, fails to satisfy you, rejoice you, comfort you, don't eat
again until you are very hungry. Then it will rejoice you--and do you
good, too.'
'They can't help it. The invalid is full of inherited superstitions and
won't starve himself. He believes it would certainly kill him.'
'What is it?'
'It ought to take but a day or two; but in fact it takes from one to six
weeks, according to the character and mentality of the patient.'
'How is that?'
'Do you see that crowd of women playing football, and boxing, and jumping
fences yonder? They have been here six or seven weeks. They were
spectral poor weaklings when they came. They were accustomed to nibbling
at dainties and delicacies at set hours four times a day, and they had no
appetite for anything. I questioned them, and then locked them into
their rooms--the frailest ones to starve nine or ten hours, the others
twelve or fifteen. Before long they began to beg; and indeed they
suffered a good deal. They complained of nausea, headache, and so on.
It was good to see them eat when the time was up. They could not
remember when the devouring of a meal had afforded them such rapture
--that was their word. Now, then, that ought to have ended their cure, but
it didn't. They were free to go to any meals in the house, and they
chose their accustomed four. Within a day or two I had to interfere.
Their appetites were weakening. I made them knock out a meal. That set
them up again. Then they resumed the four. I begged them to learn to
knock out a meal themselves, without waiting for me. Up to a fortnight
ago they couldn't; they really hadn't manhood enough; but they were
gaining it, and now I think they are safe. They drop out a meal every
now and then of their own accord. They are in fine condition now, and
they might safely go home, I think, but their confidence is not quite
perfect yet, so they are waiting awhile.'
'Oh yes. Sometimes a man learns the whole trick in a week. Learns to
regulate his appetite and keep it in perfect order. Learns to drop out a
meal with frequency and not mind it.'
'But why drop the entire meal out? Why not a part of it?'
'Formerly--for twenty-two years--a meal and a half; during the past two
years, two and a half: coffee and a roll at 9, luncheon at 1, dinner at
7.30 or 8.'
'Yes.'
'It was the family's idea. They were uneasy. They thought I was killing
myself.'
'You found a meal and a half per day enough, all through the twenty-two
years?'
'Plenty.'
'Your present poor condition is due to the extra meal. Drop it out. You
are trying to eat oftener than your stomach demands. You don't gain, you
lose. You eat less food now, in a day, on two and a half meals, than you
formerly ate on one and a half.'
'True--a good deal less; for in those olds days my dinner was a very
sizeable thing.'
'Tell me, therefore, from your vantage point of cold view, what in
your mind is the cause. Can American Jews do anything to correct it
either in America or abroad? Will it ever come to an end? Will a
Jew be permitted to live honestly, decently, and peaceably like the
rest of mankind? What has become of the Golden Rule?'
2. Can ignorance and fanaticism alone account for his unjust treatment?
Point No. 1.--We must grant proposition No. 1, for several sufficient
reasons. The Jew is not a disturber of the peace of any country. Even
his enemies will concede that. He is not a loafer, he is not a sot, he
is not noisy, he is not a brawler nor a rioter, he is not quarrelsome.
In the statistics of crime his presence is conspicuously rare--in all
countries. With murder and other crimes of violence he has but little to
do: he is a stranger to the hangman. In the police court's daily long
roll of 'assaults' and 'drunk and disorderlies' his name seldom appears.
That the Jewish home is a home in the truest sense is a fact which no one
will dispute. The family is knitted together by the strongest
affections; its members show each other every due respect; and reverence
for the elders is an inviolate law of the house. The Jew is not a burden
on the charities of the state nor of the city; these could cease from
their functions without affecting him. When he is well enough, he works;
when he is incapacitated, his own people take care of him. And not in a
poor and stingy way, but with a fine and large benevolence. His race is
entitled to be called the most benevolent of all the races of men. A
Jewish beggar is not impossible, perhaps; such a thing may exist, but
there are few men that can say they have seen that spectacle. The Jew
has been staged in many uncomplimentary forms, but, so far as I know, no
dramatist has done him the injustice to stage him as a beggar. Whenever
a Jew has real need to beg, his people save him from the necessity of
doing it. The charitable institutions of the Jews are supported by
Jewish money, and amply. The Jews make no noise about it; it is done
quietly; they do not nag and pester and harass us for contributions; they
give us peace, and set us an example--an example which he have not found
ourselves able to follow; for by nature we are not free givers, and have
to be patiently and persistently hunted down in the interest of the
unfortunate.
These facts are all on the credit side of the proposition that the Jew is
a good and orderly citizen. Summed up, they certify that he is quiet,
peaceable, industrious, unaddicted to high crimes and brutal
dispositions; that his family life is commendable; that he is not a
burden upon public charities; that he is not a beggar; that in
benevolence he is above the reach of competition. These are the very
quintessentials of good citizenship. If you can add that he is as honest
as the average of his neighbours--But I think that question is
affirmatively answered by the fact that he is a successful business man.
The basis of successful business is honesty; a business cannot thrive
where the parties to it cannot trust each other. In the matter of
numbers the Jew counts for little in the overwhelming population of New
York; but that his honest counts for much is guaranteed by the fact that
the immense wholesale business of Broadway, from the Battery to Union
Square, is substantially in his hands.
The Jew has his other side. He has some discreditable ways, though he
has not a monopoly of them, because he cannot get entirely rid of
vexatious Christian competition. We have seen that he seldom
transgresses the laws against crimes of violence. Indeed, his dealings
with courts are almost restricted to matters connected with commerce. He
has a reputation for various small forms of cheating, and for practising
oppressive usury, and for burning himself out to get the insurance, and
for arranging cunning contracts which leave him an exit but lock the
other man in, and for smart evasions which find him safe and comfortable
just within the strict letter of the law, when court and jury know very
well that he has violated the spirit of it. He is a frequent and
faithful and capable officer in the civil service, but he is charged with
an unpatriotic disinclination to stand by the flag as a soldier--like the
Christian Quaker.
Yet in all countries, from the dawn of history, the Jew has been
persistently and implacably hated, and with frequency persecuted.
Years ago I used to think that it was responsible for nearly all of it,
but latterly I have come to think that this was an error. Indeed, it is
now my conviction that it is responsible for hardly any of it.
Is it presumably that the eye of Egypt was upon Joseph the foreign Jew
all this time? I think it likely. Was it friendly? We must doubt it.
Was Joseph establishing a character for his race which would survive long
in Egypt? and in time would his name come to be familiarly used to
express that character--like Shylock's? It is hardly to be doubted. Let
us remember that this was centuries before the Crucifixion?
I wish to come down eighteen hundred years later and refer to a remark
made by one of the Latin historians. I read it in a translation many
years ago, and it comes back to me now with force. It was alluding to a
time when people were still living who could have seen the Saviour in the
flesh. Christianity was so new that the people of Rome had hardly heard
of it, and had but confused notions of what it was. The substance of the
remark was this: Some Christians were persecuted in Rome through error,
they being 'mistaken for Jews.'
The meaning seems plain. These pagans had nothing against Christians,
but they were quite ready to persecute Jews. For some reason or other
they hated a Jew before they even knew what a Christian was. May I not
assume, then, that the persecution of Jews is a thing which antedates
Christianity and was not born of Christianity? I think so. What was the
origin of the feeling?
In the cotton States, after the war, the simple and ignorant Negroes made
the crops for the white planter on shares. The Jew came down in force,
set up shop on the plantation, supplied all the negro's wants on credit,
and at the end of the season was proprietor of the negro's share of the
present crop and of part of his share of the next one. Before long, the
whites detested the Jew, and it is doubtful if the negro loved him.
The Jew is begin legislated out of Russia. The reason is not concealed.
The movement was instituted because the Christian peasant and villager
stood no chance against his commercial abilities. He was always ready to
lend money on a crop, and sell vodka and other necessities of life on
credit while the crop was growing. When settlement day came he owned the
crop; and next year or year after he owned the farm, like Joseph.
In the dull and ignorant English of John's time everybody got into debt
to the Jew. He gathered all lucrative enterprises into his hands; he was
the king of commerce; he was ready to be helpful in all profitable ways;
he even financed crusades for the rescue of the Sepulchre. To wipe out
his account with the nation and restore business to its natural and
incompetent channels he had to be banished the realm.
For the like reasons Spain had to banish him four hundred years ago, and
Austria about a couple of centuries later.
In all the ages Christian Europe has been oblige to curtail his
activities. If he entered upon a mechanical trade, the Christian had to
retire from it. If he set up as a doctor, he was the best one, and he
took the business. If he exploited agriculture, the other farmers had to
get at something else. Since there was no way to successfully compete
with him in any vocation, the law had to step in and save the Christian
from the poor-house. Trade after trade was taken away from the Jew by
statute till practically none was left. He was forbidden to engage in
agriculture; he was forbidden to practise law; he was forbidden to
practise medicine, except among Jews; he was forbidden the handicrafts.
Even the seats of learning and the schools of science had to be closed
against this tremendous antagonist. Still, almost bereft of employments,
he found ways to make money, even ways to get rich. Also ways to invest
his takings well, for usury was not denied him. In the hard conditions
suggested, the Jew without brains could not survive, and the Jew with
brains had to keep them in good training and well sharpened up, or
starve. Ages of restriction to the one tool which the law was not able
to take from him--his brain--have made that tool singularly competent;
ages of compulsory disuse of his hands have atrophied them, and he never
uses them now. This history has a very, very commercial look, a most
sordid and practical commercial look, the business aspect of a Chinese
cheap-labour crusade. Religious prejudices may account for one part of
it, but not for the other nine.
Protestants have persecuted Catholics, but they did not take their
livelihoods away from them. The Catholics have persecuted the
Protestants with bloody and awful bitterness, but they never closed
agriculture and the handicrafts against them. Why was that? That has
the candid look of genuine religious persecution, not a trade-union
boycott in a religious dispute.
The Jews are harried and obstructed in Austria and Germany, and lately in
France; but England and America give them an open field and yet survive.
Scotland offers them an unembarrassed field too, but there are not many
takers. There are a few Jews in Glasgow, and one in Aberdeen; but that
is because they can't earn enough to get away. The Scotch pay themselves
that compliment, but it is authentic.
I feel convinced that the Crucifixion has not much to do with the world's
attitude toward the Jew; that the reasons for it are older than that
event, as suggested by Egypt's experience and by Rome's regret for having
persecuted an unknown quantity called a Christian, under the mistaken
impression that she was merely persecuting a Jew. Merely a Jew--a
skinned eel who was used to it, presumably. I am persuaded that in
Russia, Austria, and Germany nine-tenths of the hostility to the Jew
comes from the average Christian's inability to compete successfully with
the average Jew in business--in either straight business or the
questionable sort.
In Berlin, a few years ago, I read a speech which frankly urged the
expulsion of the Jews from Germany; and the agitator's reason was as
frank as his proposition. It was this: that eighty-five percent of the
successful lawyers of Berlin were Jews, and that about the same
percentage of the great and lucrative businesses of all sorts in Germany
were in the hands of the Jewish race! Isn't it an amazing confession?
It was but another way of saying that in a population of 48,000,000, of
whom only 500,000 were registered as Jews, eighty-five per cent of the
brains and honesty of the whole was lodged in the Jews. I must insist
upon the honesty--it is an essential of successful business, taken by and
large. Of course it does not rule out rascals entirely, even among
Christians, but it is a good working rule, nevertheless. The speaker's
figures may have been inexact, but the motive of persecution stands out
as clear as day.
The man claimed that in Berlin the banks, the newspapers, the theatres,
the great mercantile, shipping, mining, and manufacturing interests, the
big army and city contracts, the tramways, and pretty much all other
properties of high value, and also the small businesses, were in the
hands of the Jews. He said the Jew was pushing the Christian to the wall
all along the line; that it was all a Christian could do to scrape
together a living; and that the Jew must be banished, and soon--there was
no other way of saving the Christian. Here in Vienna, last autumn,
an agitator said that all these disastrous details were true of
Austria-Hungary also; and in fierce language he demanded the expulsion of
the Jews. When politicians come out without a blush and read the baby
act in this frank way, unrebuked, it is a very good indication that they
have a market back of them, and know where to fish for votes.
You note the crucial point of the mentioned agitation; the argument is
that the Christian cannot compete with the Jew, and that hence his very
bread is in peril. To human beings this is a much more hate-inspiring
thing than is any detail connected with religion. With most people, of a
necessity, bread and meat take first rank, religion second. I am
convinced that the persecution of the Jew is not due in any large degree
to religious prejudice.
Perhaps you have let the secret out and given yourself away. It seems
hardly a credit to the race that it is able to say that; or to you, sir,
that you can say it without remorse; more, that you should offer it as a
plea against maltreatment, injustice, and oppression. Who gives the Jew
the right, who gives any race the right, to sit still in a free country,
and let somebody else look after its safety? The oppressed Jew was
entitled to all pity in the former times under brutal autocracies, for he
was weak and friendless, and had no way to help his case. But he has
ways now, and he has had them for a century, but I do not see that he has
tried to make serious use of then. When the Revolution set him free in
France it was an act of grace--the grace of other people; he does not
appear in it as a helper. I do not know that he helped when England set
him free. Among the Twelve Sane Men of France who have stepped forward
with great Zola at their head to fight (and win, I hope and believe[3])
the battle for the most infamously misused Jew of modern times, do you
find a great or rich or illustrious Jew helping? In the United States he
was created free in the beginning--he did not need to help, of course.
In Austria and Germany and France he has a vote, but of what considerable
use is it to him? He doesn't seem to know how to apply it to the best
effect. With all his splendid capacities and all his fat wealth he is
to-day not politically important in any country. In America, as early as
1854, the ignorant Irish hod-carrier, who had a spirit of his own and a
way of exposing it to the weather, made it apparent to all that he must
be politically reckoned with; yet fifteen years before that we hardly
knew what an Irishman looked like. As an intelligent force and
numerically, he has always been away down, but he has governed the
country just the same. It was because he was organised. It made his
vote valuable--in fact, essential.
You will say the Jew is everywhere numerically feeble. That is nothing
to the point--with the Irishman's history for an object-lesson. But I am
coming to your numerical feebleness presently. In all parliamentary
countries you could no doubt elect Jews to the legislatures--and even one
member in such a body is sometimes a force which counts. How deeply have
you concerned yourselves about this in Austria, France, and Germany? Or
even in America, for that matter? You remark that the Jews were not to
blame for the riots in this Reichsrath here, and you add with
satisfaction that there wasn't one in that body. That is not strictly
correct; if it were, would it not be in order for you to explain it and
apologise for it, not try to make a merit of it? But I think that the
Jew was by no means in as large force there as he ought to have been,
with his chances. Austria opens the suffrage to him on fairly liberal
terms, and it must surely be his own fault that he is so much in the
background politically.
I have some suspicions; I got them at second-hand, but they have remained
with me these ten or twelve years. When I read in the 'E.B.' that the
Jewish population of the United States was 250,000 I wrote the editor,
and explained to him that I was personally acquainted with more Jews than
that in my country, and that his figures were without a doubt a misprint
for 25,000,000. I also added that I was personally acquainted with that
many there; but that was only to raise his confidence in me, for it was
not true. His answer miscarried, and I never got it; but I went around
talking about the matter, and people told me they had reason to suspect
that for business reasons many Jews whose dealings were mainly with the
Christians did not report themselves as Jews in the census. It looked
plausible; it looks plausible yet. Look at the city of New York; and
look at Boston, and Philadelphia, and New Orleans, and Chicago, and
Cincinnati, and San Francisco--how your race swarms in those places!--and
everywhere else in America, down to the least little village. Read the
signs on the marts of commerce and on the shops; Goldstein (gold stone),
Edelstein (precious stone), Blumenthal (flower-vale), Rosenthal
(rose-vale), Veilchenduft (violent odour), Singvogel (song-bird),
Rosenzweig (rose branch), and all the amazing list of beautiful and
enviable names which Prussia and Austria glorified you with so long ago.
It is another instance of Europe's coarse and cruel persecution of your
race; not that it was coarse and cruel to outfit it with pretty and
poetical names like those, but it was coarse and cruel to make it pay for
them or else take such hideous and often indecent names that to-day their
owners never use them; or, if they do, only on official papers. And it
was the many, not the few, who got the odious names, they being too poor
to bribe the officials to grant them better ones.
Now why was the race renamed? I have been told that in Prussia it was
given to using fictitious names, and often changing them, so as to beat
the tax-gatherer, escape military service, and so on; and that finally
the idea was hit upon of furnishing all the inmates of a house with one
and the same surname, and then holding the house responsible right along
for those inmates, and accountable for any disappearances that might
occur; it made the Jews keep track of each other, for self-interest's
sake, and saved the Government the trouble[4].
And then from America and England you can encourage your race in Austria,
France, and Germany, and materially help it. It was a pathetic tale that
was told by a poor Jew a fortnight ago during the riots, after he had
been raided by the Christian peasantry and despoiled of everything he
had. He said his vote was of no value to him, and he wished he could be
excused from casting it, for indeed, casting it was a sure damage to him,
since, no matter which party he voted for, the other party would come
straight and take its revenge out of him. Nine per cent of the
population, these Jews, and apparently they cannot put a plank into any
candidate's platform! If you will send our Irish lads over here I think
they will organise your race and change the aspect of the Reichsrath.
You seem to think that the Jews take no hand in politics here, that they
are 'absolutely non-participants.' I am assured by men competent to
speak that this is a very large error, that the Jews are exceedingly
active in politics all over the empire, but that they scatter their work
and their votes among the numerous parties, and thus lose the advantages
to be had by concentration. I think that in America they scatter too,
but you know more about that than I do.
Speaking of concentration, Dr. Herzl has a clear insight into the value
of that. Have you heard of his plan? He wishes to gather the Jews of
the world together in Palestine, with a government of their own--under
the suzerainty of the Sultan, I suppose. At the Convention of Berne,
last year, there were delegates from everywhere, and the proposal was
received with decided favour. I am not the Sultan, and I am not
objecting; but if that concentration of the cunningest brains in the
world were going to be made in a free country (bar Scotland), I think it
would be politic to stop it. It will not be well to let that race find
out its strength. If the horses knew theirs, we should not ride any
more.
Point No. 5.--'Will the persecution of the Jews ever come to an end?'
But you were the favourites of Heaven originally, and your manifold and
unfair prosperities convince me that you have crowded back into that snug
place again. Here is an incident that is significant. Last week in
Vienna a hailstorm struck the prodigious Central Cemetery and made
wasteful destruction there. In the Christian part of it, according to
the official figures, 621 window-panes were broken; more than 900
singing-birds were killed; five great trees and many small ones were torn
to shreds and the shreds scattered far and wide by the wind; the
ornamental plants and other decorations of the graces were ruined, and
more than a hundred tomb-lanterns shattered; and it took the cemetery's
whole force of 300 labourers more than three days to clear away the
storm's wreckage. In the report occurs this remark--and in its italics
you can hear it grit its Christian teeth: '...lediglich die israelitische
Abtheilung des Friedhofes vom Hagelwetter ganzlich verschont worden war.'
Not a hailstone hit the Jewish reservation! Such nepotism makes me
tired.
To conclude.--If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one
per cent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star-dust
lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be
heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as
prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial
importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his
bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in
literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning
are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has
made a marvellous fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it
with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be
excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose,
filled the planet with sound and splendour, then faded to dream-stuff and
passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and
they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for
a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have
vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always
was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his
parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive
mind. All things are mortal to the Jew; all other forces pass, but he
remains. What is the secret of his immortality?
In the above article I was neither able to endorse nor repel the common
approach that the Jew is willing to feed upon a country but not to fight
for it, because I did not know whether it was true or false. I supposed
it to be true, but it is not allowable to endorse wandering maxims upon
supposition--except when one is trying to make out a case. That slur
upon the Jew cannot hold up its head in presence of the figures of the
War Department. It has done its work, and done it long and faithfully,
and with high approval: it ought to be pensioned off now, and retired
from active service.
The 'Sun,' which tells the above story, says that bills were introduced
in three or four Congresses for Moses' relief, and that committees
repeatedly investigated his claim.
[4] In Austria the renaming was merely done because the Jews in some
newly-acquired regions had no surnames, but were mostly named Abraham and
Moses, and therefore the tax-gatherer could tell t'other from which, and
was likely to lose his reason over the matter. The renaming was put into
the hands of the War Department, and a charming mess the graceless young
lieutenants made of it. To them a Jew was of no sort of consequence, and
they labelled the race in a way to make the angels weep. As an example,
take these two: Abraham Bellyache and Schmul Godbedamned--Culled from
'Namens Studien,' by Karl Emil Fransos.
This smoking-party had been gathered together partly for business. This
business was to consider the availability of the telelectroscope for
military service. It sounds oddly enough now, but it is nevertheless
true that at that time the invention was not taken seriously by any one
except its inventor. Even his financial support regarded it merely as a
curious and interesting toy. Indeed, he was so convinced of this that he
had actually postponed its use by the general world to the end of the
dying century by granting a two years' exclusive lease of it to a
syndicate, whose intent was to exploit it at the Paris World's Fair.
When we entered the smoking-room we found Lieutenant Clayton and
Szczepanik engaged in a warm talk over the telelectroscope in the German
tongue. Clayton was saying:
'Well, you know my opinion of it, anyway!' and he brought his fist down
with emphasis upon the table.
'And I do not value it,' retorted the young inventor, with provoking
calmness of tone and manner.
'I cannot see why you are wasting money on this toy. In my opinion, the
day will never come when it will do a farthing's worth of real service
for any human being.'
'That may be; yes, that may be; still, I have put the money in it, and am
content. I think, myself, that it is only a toy; but Szczepanik claims
more for it, and I know him well enough to believe that he can see father
than I can--either with his telelectroscope or without it.'
The soft answer did not cool Clayton down; it seemed only to irritate him
the more; and he repeated and emphasised his conviction that the
invention would never do any man a farthing's worth of real service. He
even made it a 'brass' farthing, this time. Then he laid an English
farthing on the table, and added:
'Take that, Mr. K., and put it away; and if ever the telelectroscope does
any man an actual service--mind, a real service--please mail it to me as
a reminder, and I will take back what I have been saying. Will you?'
Mr. Clayton now turned toward Szczepanik, and began with a taunt--a taunt
which did not reach a finish; Szczepanik interrupted it with a hardy
retort, and followed this with a blow. There was a brisk fight for a
moment or two; then the attaches separated the men.
The scene now changes to Chicago. Time, the autumn of 1901. As soon as
the Paris contract released the telelectroscope, it was delivered to
public use, and was soon connected with the telephonic systems of the
whole world. The improved 'limitless-distance' telephone was presently
introduced, and the daily doings of the globe made visible to everybody,
and audibly discussible, too, by witnesses separated by any number of
leagues.
Now comes the tragedy. On December 29, in a dark and unused compartment
of the cellar under Captain Clayton's house, a corpse was discovered by
one of Clayton's maid-servants. Friends of deceased identified it as
Szczepanik's. The man had died by violence. Clayton was arrested,
indicted, and brought to trial, charged with this murder. The evidence
against him was perfect in every detail, and absolutely unassailable.
Clayton admitted this himself. He said that a reasonable man could not
examine this testimony with a dispassionate mind and not be convinced by
it; yet the man would be in error, nevertheless. Clayton swore that he
did not commit the murder, and that he had had nothing to do with it.
The governor's situation has been embarrassing, from the day of the
condemnation, because of the fact that Clayton's wife is the governor's
niece. The marriage took place in 1899, when Clayton was thirty-four and
the girl twenty-three, and has been a happy one. There is one child, a
little girl three years old. Pity for the poor mother and child kept the
mouths of grumblers closed at first; but this could not last for ever
--for in America politics has a hand in everything--and by-and-by the
governor's political opponents began to call attention to his delay in
allowing the law to take its course. These hints have grown more and
more frequent of late, and more and more pronounced. As a natural
result, his own part grew nervous. Its leaders began to visit
Springfield and hold long private conferences with him. He was now
between two fires. On the one hand, his niece was imploring him to
pardon her husband; on the other were the leaders, insisting that he
stand to his plain duty as chief magistrate of the State, and place no
further bar to Clayton's execution. Duty won in the struggle, and the
Governor gave his word that he would not again respite the condemned man.
This was two weeks ago. Mrs. Clayton now said:
'Now that you have given your word, my last hope is gone, for I know you
will never go back from it. But you have done the best you could for
John, and I have no reproaches for you. You love him, and you love me,
and we know that if you could honourable save him, you would do it. I
will go to him now, and be what help I can to him, and get what comfort I
may out of the few days that are left to us before the night comes which
will have no end for me in life. You will be with me that day? You will
not let me bear it alone?'
'I will take you to him myself, poor child, and I will be near you to the
last.'
She was carried away to her lodging, poor woman, and Clayton and I were
alone--alone, and thinking, brooding, dreaming. We might have been
statues, we sat so motionless and still. It was a wild night, for winter
was come again for a moment, after the habit of this region in the early
spring. The sky was starless and black, and a strong wind was blowing
from the lake. The silence in the room was so deep that all outside
sounds seemed exaggerated by contrast with it. These sounds were fitting
ones: they harmonised with the situation and the conditions: the boom and
thunder of sudden storm-gusts among the roofs and chimneys, then the
dying down into moanings and wailings about the eaves and angles; now and
then a gnashing and lashing rush of sleet along the window-panes; and
always the muffled and uncanny hammering of the gallows-builders in the
court-yard. After an age of this, another sound--far off, and coming
smothered and faint through the riot of the tempest--a bell tolling
twelve! Another age, and it was tolled again. By-and-by, again. A
dreary long interval after this, then the spectral sound floated to us
once more--one, two three; and this time we caught our breath; sixty
minutes of life left!
Clayton rose, and stood by the window, and looked up into the black sky,
and listened to the thrashing sleet and the piping wind; then he said:
'That a dying man's last of earth should be--this!' After a little he
said: 'I must see the sun again--the sun!' and the next moment he was
feverishly calling: 'China! Give me China--Peking!'
I was strangely stirred, and said to myself: 'To think that it is a mere
human being who does this unimaginable miracle--turns winter into summer,
night into day, storm into calm, gives the freedom of the great globe to
a prisoner in his cell, and the sun in his naked splendour to a man dying
in Egyptian darkness.'
I was listening.
'Yes.'
'The time?'
'Mid-afternoon.'
'What is the great crowd for, and in such gorgeous costumes? What masses
and masses of rich colour and barbaric magnificence! And how they flash
and glow and burn in the flooding sunlight! What is the occasion of it
all?'
'Certainly it is. But my mind is confused, these days: there are reasons
for it.... Is this the beginning of the procession?'
After a pause, softly: 'Yes.' After another pause: 'Who are these in the
splendid pavilion?'
'The imperial family, and visiting royalties from here and there and
yonder in the earth.'
'And who are those in the adjoining pavilions to the right and left?'
The door closed; they were gone. I was ashamed: I was the only friend of
the dying man that had no spirit, no courage. I stepped into the room,
and said I would be a man and would follow. But we are made as we are
made, and we cannot help it. I did not go.
I fidgeted about the room nervously, and presently went to the window and
softly raised it--drawn by that dread fascination which the terrible and
the awful exert--and looked down upon the court-yard. By the garish
light of the electric lamps I saw the little group of privileged
witnesses, the wife crying on her uncle's breast, the condemned man
standing on the scaffold with the halter around his neck, his arms
strapped to his body, the black cap on his head, the sheriff at his side
with his hand on the drop, the clergyman in front of him with bare head
and his book in his hand.
I turned away. I could not listen; I could not look. I did not know
whither to go or what to do. Mechanically and without knowing it, I put
my eye to that strange instrument, and there was Peking and the Czar's
procession! The next moment I was leaning out of the window, gasping,
suffocating, trying to speak, but dumb from the very imminence of the
necessity of speaking. The preacher could speak, but I, who had such
need of words--'And may God have mercy upon your soul. Amen.'
The sheriff drew down the black cap, and laid his hand upon the lever. I
got my voice.
'Stop, for God's sake! The man is innocent. Come here and see
Szczepanik face to face!'
Hardly three minutes later the governor had my place at the window, and
was saying:
Three minutes later all were in the parlour again. The reader will
imagine the scene; I have no need to describe it. It was a sort of mad
orgy of joy.
A messenger carried word to Szczepanik in the pavilion, and one could see
the distressed amazement in his face as he listened to the tale. Then he
came to his end of the line, and talked with Clayton and the governor and
the others; and the wife poured out her gratitude upon him for saving her
husband's life, and in her deep thankfulness she kissed him at twelve
thousand miles' range.
The telelectroscopes of the world were put to service now, and for many
hours the kinds and queens of many realms (with here and there a
reporter) talked with Szczepanik, and praised him; and the few scientific
societies which had not already made him an honorary member conferred
that grace upon him.
How had he come to disappear from among us? It was easily explained.
HE had not grown used to being a world-famous person, and had been forced
to break away from the lionising that was robbing him of all privacy and
repose. So he grew a beard, put on coloured glasses, disguised himself a
little in other ways, then took a fictitious name, and went off to wander
about the earth in peace.
Such is the tale of the drama which began with an inconsequential quarrel
in Vienna in the spring of 1898, and came near ending as a tragedy in the
spring of 1904.
II
'I do not need to say anything: you can see it all in my face. My wife
has the farthing. Do not be afraid--she will not throw it away.'
III
Now that the after developments of the Clayton case have run their course
and reached a finish, I will sum them up. Clayton's romantic escape from
a shameful death stepped all this region in an enchantment of wonder and
joy--during the proverbial nine days. Then the sobering process
followed, and men began to take thought, and to say: 'But a man was
killed, and Clayton killed him.' Others replied: 'That is true: we have
been overlooking that important detail; we have been led away by
excitement.'
The telling soon became general that Clayton ought to be tried again.
Measures were taken accordingly, and the proper representations conveyed
to Washington; for in America under the new paragraph added to the
Constitution in 1889, second trials are not State affairs, but national,
and must be tried by the most august body in the land--the Supreme Court
of the United States. The justices were therefore summoned to sit in
Chicago. The session was held day before yesterday, and was opened with
the usual impressive formalities, the nine judges appearing in their
black robes, and the new chief justice (Lemaitre) presiding. In opening
the case the chief justice said:
'It is my opinion that this matter is quite simple. The prisoner at the
bar was charged with murdering the man Szczepanik; he was tried for
murdering the man Szczepanik; he was fairly tried and justly condemned
and sentenced to death for murdering the man Szczepanik. It turns out
that the man Szczepanik was not murdered at all. By the decision of the
French courts in the Dreyfus matter, it is established beyond cavil or
question that the decisions of courts and permanent and cannot be
revised. We are obliged to respect and adopt this precedent. It is upon
precedents that the enduring edifice of jurisprudence is reared. The
prisoner at the bar has been fairly and righteously condemned to death
for the murder of the man Szczepanik, and, in my opinion, there is but
one course to pursue in the matter: he must be hanged.'
'The pardon is not valid, and cannot stand, because he was pardoned for
killing Szczepanik, a man whom he had not killed. A man cannot be
pardoned for a crime which he has not committed; it would be an
absurdity.'
'He will not have the power. He cannot pardon a man for a crime which he
has not committed. As I observed before, it would be an absurdity.'
'So is Dreyfus.'
In the end it was found impossible to ignore or get around the French
precedent. There could be but one result: Clayton was delivered over for
the execution. It made an immense excitement; the State rose as one man
and clamored for Clayton's pardon and retrial. The governor issued the
pardon, but the Supreme Court was in duty bound to annul it, and did so,
and poor Clayton was hanged yesterday. The city is draped in black, and,
indeed, the like may be said of the State. All America is vocal with
scorn of 'French justice,' and of the malignant little soldiers who
invented it and inflicted it upon the other Christian lands.
ABOUT PLAY-ACTING
I have just been witnessing a remarkable play, here at the Burg Theatre
in Vienna. I do not know of any play that much resembles it. In fact,
it is such a departure from the common laws of the drama that the name
'play' doesn't seem to fit it quite snugly. However, whatever else it
may be, it is in any case a great and stately metaphysical poem, and
deeply fascinating. 'Deeply fascinating' is the right term: for the
audience sat four hours and five minutes without thrice breaking into
applause, except at the close of each act; sat rapt and silent
--fascinated. This piece is 'The Master of Palmyra.' It is twenty years
old; yet I doubt if you have ever heard of it. It is by Wilbrandt, and
is his masterpiece and the work which is to make his name permanent in
German literature. It has never been played anywhere except in Berlin
and in the great Burg Theatre in Vienna. Yet whenever it is put on the
stage it packs the house, and the free list is suspended. I know people
who have seem it ten times; they know the most of it by heart; they do
not tire of it; and they say they shall still be quite willing to go and
sit under its spell whenever they get the opportunity.
After many years she appears in the second act as Phoebe, a graceful and
beautiful young light-o'-love from Rome, whose soul is all for the shows
and luxuries and delights of this life--a dainty and capricious
feather-head, a creature of shower and sunshine, a spoiled child, but a
charming one. In the third act, after an interval of many years, she
reappears as Persida, mother of a daughter who is in the fresh bloom of
youth. She is now a sort of combination of her two earlier selves: in
religious loyalty and subjection she is Zoe: in triviality of character
and shallowness of judgement--together with a touch of vanity in dress
--she is Phoebe.
And after another stretch of years all these heredities are joined in the
Zenobia of the fifth act--a person of gravity, dignity, sweetness, with a
heart filled with compassion for all who suffer, and a hand prompt to put
into practical form the heart's benignant impulses.
Another strong effect: Death, in person, walks about the stage in every
act. So far as I could make out, he was supposably not visible to any
excepting two persons--the one he came for and Appelles. He used various
costumes: but there was always more black about them than any other tint;
and so they were always sombre. Also they were always deeply impressive
and, indeed, awe-inspiring. The face was not subjected to changes, but
remained the same first and last--a ghastly white. To me he was always
welcome, he seemed so real--the actual Death, not a play-acting
artificiality. He was of a solemn and stately carriage; and he had a
deep voice, and used it with a noble dignity. Wherever there was a
turmoil of merry-making or fighting or feasting or chaffing or
quarreling, or a gilded pageant, or other manifestation of our trivial
and fleeting life, into it drifted that black figure with the
corpse-face, and looked its fateful look and passed on; leaving its
victim shuddering and smitten. And always its coming made the fussy
human pack seem infinitely pitiful and shabby, and hardly worth the
attention of either saving or damning.
In the beginning of the first act the young girl Zoe appears by some
great rocks in the desert, and sits down exhausted, to rest. Presently
arrive a pauper couple stricken with age and infirmities; and they begin
to mumble and pray to the Spirit of Life, who is said to inhabit that
spot. The Spirit of Life appears; also Death--uninvited. They are
(supposably) invisible. Death, tall, black-robed, corpse-faced, stands
motionless and waits. The aged couple pray to the Spirit of Life for a
means to prop up their existence and continue it. Their prayer fails.
The Spirit of Life prophesies Zoe's martyrdom; it will take place before
night. Soon Appelles arrives, young and vigorous and full of enthusiasm:
he has led a host against the Persians and won the battle; he is the pet
of fortune, rich, honoured, believed, 'Master of Palmyra'. He has heard
that whoever stretches himself out on one of those rocks there and asks
for a deathless life can have his wish. He laughs at the tradition, but
wants to make the trial anyway. The invisible Spirit of Life warns him!
'Life without end can be regret without end.' But he persists: let him
keep his youth, his strength, and his mental faculties unimpaired, and he
will take all the risks. He has his desire.
From this time forth, act after act, the troubles and sorrows and
misfortunes and humiliations of life beat upon him without pity or
respite; but he will not give up, he will not confess his mistake.
Whenever he meets Death he still furiously defies him--but Death
patiently waits. He, the healer of sorrows, is man's best friend: the
recognition of this will come. As the years drag on, and on, and on, the
friends of the Master's youth grow old; and one by one they totter to the
grave: he goes on with his proud fight, and will not yield. At length he
is wholly alone in the world; all his friends are dead; last of all, his
darling of darlings, his son, the lad Nymphas, who dies in his arms. His
pride is broken now; and he would welcome Death, if Death would come, if
Death would hear his prayers and give him peace. The closing act is fine
and pathetic. Appelles meets Zenobia, the helper of all who suffer, and
tells her his story, which moves her pity. By common report she is
endowed with more than earthly powers; and since he cannot have the boon
of death, he appeals to her to drown his memory in forgetfulness of his
griefs--forgetfulness 'which is death's equivalent'. She says (roughly
translated), in an exaltation of compassion:
'Come to me!
He kneels. From her hand, which she lays upon his head, a mysterious
influence steals through him; and he sinks into a dreamy tranquility.
Death appears behind him and encloses the uplifted hand in his. Appelles
shudders, wearily and slowly turns, and recognises his life-long
adversary. He smiles and puts all his gratitude into one simple and
touching sentence, 'Ich danke dir,' and dies.
Nothing, I think, could be more moving, more beautiful, than this close.
This piece is just one long, soulful, sardonic laugh at human life. Its
title might properly be 'Is Life a Failure?' and leave the five acts to
play with the answer. I am not at all sure that the author meant to
laugh at life. I only notice that he has done it. Without putting into
words any ungracious or discourteous things about life, the episodes in
the piece seem to be saying all the time, inarticulately: 'Note what a
silly poor thing human life is; how childish its ambitions, how
ridiculous its pomps, how trivial its dignities, how cheap its heroisms,
how capricious its course, how brief its flight, how stingy in
happinesses, how opulent in miseries, how few its prides, how
multitudinous its humiliations, how comic its tragedies, how tragic its
comedies, how wearisome and monotonous its repetition of its stupid
history through the ages, with never the introduction of a new detail;
how hard it has tried, from the Creation down, to play itself upon its
possessor as a boon and has never proved its case in a single instance!'
Take note of some of the details of the piece. Each of the five acts
contains an independent tragedy of its own. In each act someone's
edifice of hope, or of ambition, or of happiness, goes down in ruins.
Even Appelles' perennial youth is only a long tragedy, and his life a
failure. There are two martyrdoms in the piece; and they are curiously
and sarcastically contrasted. In the first act the pagans persecute Zoe,
the Christian girl, and a pagan mob slaughters her. In the fourth act
those same pagans--now very old and zealous--are become Christians, and
they persecute the pagans; a mob of them slaughters the pagan youth,
Nymphas, who is standing up for the old gods of his fathers. No remark
is made about this picturesque failure of civilisation; but there it
stands, as an unworded suggestion that civilisation, even when
Christianised, was not able wholly to subdue the natural man in that old
day--just as in our day the spectacle of a shipwrecked French crew
clubbing women and children who tried to climb into the lifeboats
suggests that civilisation has not succeeded in entirely obliterating the
natural man even yet. Common sailors a year ago, in Paris, at a fire,
the aristocracy of the same nation clubbed girls and women out of the way
to save themselves. Civilisation tested at top and bottom both, you see.
And in still another panic of fright we have this same tough civilisation
saving its honour by condemning an innocent man to multiform death, and
hugging and whitewashing the guilty one.
In the second act a grand Roman official is not above trying to blast
Appelles' reputation by falsely charging him with misappropriating public
moneys. Appelles, who is too proud to endure even the suspicion of
irregularity, strips himself to naked poverty to square the unfair
account, and his troubles begin: the blight which is to continue and
spread strikes his life; for the frivolous, pretty creature whom he
brought from Rome has no taste for poverty and agrees to elope with a
more competent candidate. Her presence in the house has previously
brought down the pride and broken the heart of Appelles' poor old mother;
and her life is a failure. Death comes for her, but is willing to trade
her for the Roman girl; so the bargain is struck with Appelles, and the
mother is spared for the present.
No one's life escapes the blight. Timoleus, the gay satirist of the
first two acts, who scoffed at the pious hypocrisies and money-grubbing
ways of the great Roman lords, is grown old and fat and blear-eyed and
racked with disease in the third, has lost his stately purities, and
watered the acid of his wit. His life has suffered defeat. Unthinkingly
he swears by Zeus--from ancient habit--and then quakes with fright; for a
fellow-communicant is passing by. Reproached by a pagan friend of his
youth for his apostasy, he confesses that principle, when unsupported by
an assenting stomach, has to climb down. One must have bread; and 'the
bread is Christian now.' Then the poor old wreck, once so proud of his
iron rectitude, hobbles away, coughing and barking.
In that same act Appelles give his sweet young Christian daughter and her
fine young pagan lover his consent and blessing, and makes them utterly
happy--for five minutes. Then the priest and the mob come, to tear them
apart and put the girl in a nunnery; for marriage between the sects is
forbidden. Appelles' wife could dissolve the rule; and she wants to do
it; but under priestly pressure she wavers; then, fearing that in
providing happiness for her child she would be committing a sin dangerous
to her own, she goes over to the opposition, and throws the casting vote
for the nunnery. The blight has fallen upon the young couple, and their
life is a failure.
In the fourth act, Longinus, who made such a prosperous and enviable
start in the first act, is left alone in the desert, sick, blind,
helpless, incredibly old, to die: not a friend left in the world--another
ruined life. And in that act, also, Appelles' worshipped boy, Nymphas,
done to death by the mob, breathes out his last sigh in his father's
arms--one more failure. In the fifth act, Appelles himself dies, and is
glad to do it; he who so ignorantly rejoiced, only four acts before, over
the splendid present of an earthly immortality--the very worst failure of
the lot!
II
Now I approach my project. Here is the theatre list for Saturday, May 7,
1898, cut from the advertising columns of a New York paper:
[graphic here]
I have made my suggestion. Now I wish to put an annex to it. And that
is this: It is right and wholesome to have those light comedies and
entertaining shows; and I shouldn't wish to see them diminished. But
none of us is always in the comedy spirit; we have our graver moods; they
come to us all; the lightest of us cannot escape them. These moods have
their appetites--healthy and legitimate appetites--and there ought to be
some way of satisfying them. It seems to me that New York ought to have
one theatre devoted to tragedy. With her three millions of population,
and seventy outside millions to draw upon, she can afford it, she can
support it. America devotes more time, labour, money and attention to
distributing literary and musical culture among the general public than
does any other nation, perhaps; yet here you find her neglecting what is
possibly the most effective of all the breeders and nurses and
disseminators of high literary taste and lofty emotion--the tragic stage.
To leave that powerful agency out is to haul the culture-wagon with a
crippled team. Nowadays, when a mood comes which only Shakespeare can
set to music, what must we do? Read Shakespeare ourselves! Isn't it
pitiful? It is playing an organ solo on a jew's-harp. We can't read.
None but the Booths can do it.
Thirty years ago Edwin Booth played 'Hamlet' a hundred nights in New
York. With three times the population, how often is 'Hamlet' played now
in a year? If Booth were back now in his prime, how often could he play
it in New York? Some will say twenty-five nights. I will say three
hundred, and say it with confidence. The tragedians are dead; but I
think that the taste and intelligence which made their market are not.
What has come over us English-speaking people? During the first half of
this century tragedies and great tragedians were as common with us as
farce and comedy; and it was the same in England. Now we have not a
tragedian, I believe, and London, with her fifty shows and theatres, has
but three, I think. It is an astonishing thing, when you come to
consider it. Vienna remains upon the ancient basis: there has been no
change. She sticks to the former proportions: a number of rollicking
comedies, admirably played, every night; and also every night at the Burg
Theatre--that wonder of the world for grace and beauty and richness and
splendour and costliness--a majestic drama of depth and seriousness, or a
standard old tragedy. It is only within the last dozen years that men
have learned to do miracles on the stage in the way of grand and
enchanting scenic effects; and it is at such a time as this that we have
reduced our scenery mainly to different breeds of parlours and varying
aspects of furniture and rugs. I think we must have a Burg in New York,
and Burg scenery, and a great company like the Burg company. Then, with
a tragedy-tonic once or twice a month, we shall enjoy the comedies all
the better. Comedy keeps the heart sweet; but we all know that there is
wholesome refreshment for both mind and heart in an occasional climb
among the solemn pomps of the intellectual snow-summits built by
Shakespeare and those others. Do I seem to be preaching? It is out of
my life: I only do it because the rest of the clergy seem to be on
vacation.
Last spring I went out to Chicago to see the Fair, and although I did not
see it my trip was not wholly lost--there were compensations. In New
York I was introduced to a Major in the regular army who said he was
going to the Fair, and we agreed to go together. I had to go to Boston
first, but that did not interfere; he said he would go along and put in
the time. He was a handsome man and built like a gladiator. But his
ways were gentle, and his speech was soft and persuasive. He was
companionable, but exceedingly reposeful. Yes, and wholly destitute of
the sense of humour. He was full of interest in everything that went on
around him, but his serenity was indestructible; nothing disturbed him,
nothing excited him.
But before the day was done I found that deep down in him somewhere he
had a passion, quiet as he was--a passion for reforming petty public
abuses. He stood for citizenship--it was his hobby. His idea was that
every citizen of the republic ought to consider himself an unofficial
policeman, and keep unsalaried watch and ward over the laws and their
execution. He thought that the only effective way of preserving and
protecting public rights was for each citizen to do his share in
preventing or punishing such infringements of them as came under his
personal notice.
It was a good scheme, but I thought it would keep a body in trouble all
the time; it seemed to me that one would be always trying to get
offending little officials discharged, and perhaps getting laughed at for
all reward. But he said no, I had the wrong idea: that there was no
occasion to get anybody discharged; that in fact you mustn't get anybody
discharged; that that would itself be a failure; no, one must reform the
man--reform him and make him useful where he was.
'Must one report the offender and then beg his superior not to discharge
him, but reprimand him and keep him?'
'No, that is not the idea; you don't report him at all, for then you risk
his bread and butter. You can act as if you are going to report him
--when nothing else will answer. But that's an extreme case. That is a
sort of force, and force is bad. Diplomacy is the effective thing. Now
if a man has tact--if a man will exercise diplomacy--'
For two minutes we had been standing at a telegraph wicket, and during
all this time the Major had been trying to get the attention of one of
the young operators, but they were all busy skylarking. The Major spoke
now, and asked one of them to take his telegram. He got for reply:
'I reckon you can wait a minute, can't you?' And the skylarking went on.
The Major said yes, he was not in a hurry. Then he wrote another
telegram:
'Come and dine with me this evening. I can tell you how business is
conducted in one of your branches.'
Presently the young fellow who had spoken so pertly a little before
reached out and took the telegram, and when he read it he lost colour and
began to apologise and explain. He said he would lose his place if this
deadly telegram was sent, and he might never get another. If he could be
let off this time he would give no cause of complaint again. The
compromise was accepted.
'Now, you see, that was diplomacy--and you see how it worked. It
wouldn't do any good to bluster, the way people are always doing. That
boy can always give you as good as you send, and you'll come out defeated
and ashamed of yourself pretty nearly always. But you see he stands no
chance against diplomacy. Gentle words and diplomacy--those are the
tools to work with.'
'Yes, I see: but everybody wouldn't have had your opportunity. It isn't
everybody that is on those familiar terms with the President of the
Western Union.'
'Oh, you misunderstand. I don't know the President--I only use him
diplomatically. It is for his good and for the public good. There's no
harm in it.'
'Yes, sometimes. Lies told to injure a person and lies told to profit
yourself are not justifiable, but lies told to help another person, and
lies told in the public interest--oh, well, that is quite another matter.
Anybody knows that. But never mind about the methods: you see the
result. That youth is going to be useful now, and well-behaved. He had
a good face. He was worth saving. Why, he was worth saving on his
mother's account if not his own. Of course, he has a mother--sisters,
too. Damn these people who are always forgetting that! Do you know,
I've never fought a duel in my life--never once--and yet have been
challenged, like other people. I could always see the other man's
unoffending women folks or his little children standing between him and
me. They hadn't done anything--I couldn't break their hearts, you know.'
He corrected a good many little abuses in the course of the day, and
always without friction--always with a fine and dainty 'diplomacy' which
left no sting behind; and he got such happiness and such contentment out
of these performances that I was obliged to envy him his trade--and
perhaps would have adopted it if I could have managed the necessary
deflections from fact as confidently with my mouth as I believe I could
with a pen, behind the shelter of print, after a little practice.
Away late that night we were coming up-town in a horse-car when three
boisterous roughs got aboard, and began to fling hilarious obscenities
and profanities right and left among the timid passengers, some of whom
were women and children. Nobody resisted or retorted; the conductor
tried soothing words and moral suasion, but the toughs only called him
names and laughed at him. Very soon I saw that the Major realised that
this was a matter which was in his line; evidently he was turning over
his stock of diplomacy in his mind and getting ready. I felt that the
first diplomatic remark he made in this place would bring down a
landslide of ridicule upon him, and maybe something worse; but before I
could whisper to him and check him he had begun, and it was too late. He
said, in a level and dispassionate tone:
'Conductor, you must put these swine out. I will help you.'
I was not looking for that. In a flash the three roughs plunged at him.
But none of them arrived. He delivered three such blows as one could not
expect to encounter outside the prize-ring, and neither of the men had
life enough left in him to get up from where he fell. The Major dragged
them out and threw them off the car, and we got under way again.
'That? That wasn't diplomacy. You are quite in the wrong. Diplomacy is
a wholly different thing. One cannot apply it to that sort; they would
not understand it. No, that was not diplomacy; it was force.'
'Now that you mention it, I--yes, I think perhaps you are right.'
'I think, myself, it had the outside aspect of it. Do you often have to
reform people in that way?'
'Far from it. It hardly ever happens. Not oftener than once in half a
year, at the outside.'
'Get well? Why, certainly they will. They are not in any danger. I
know how to hit and where to hit. You noticed that I did not hit them
under the jaw. That would have killed them.'
After a little the conductor passed along, and the Major stopped him and
asked him a question in his habitually courteous way:
'Conductor, where does one report the misconduct of a brakeman? Does one
report to you?'
'You can report him at New Haven if you want to. What has he been
doing?'
The Major told the story. The conductor seemed amused. He said, with
just a touch of sarcasm in his bland tones:
'As I understand you, the brakeman didn't say anything?'
'Yes.'
'Yes.'
'Well, if you want to report him, all right, but I don't quite make out
what it's going to amount to. You'll say--as I understand you--that the
brakeman insulted this old gentleman. They'll ask you what he said.
You'll say he didn't say anything at all. I reckon they'll say, How are
you going to make out an insult when you acknowledge yourself that he
didn't say a word?'
'But not too fine, I think. I will report this matter at New Haven, and
I have an idea that I'll be thanked for it.'
'You are not really going to bother with that trifle, are you?'
'Why?'
'It won't be necessary. Diplomacy will do the business. You'll see.'
Presently the conductor came on his rounds again, and when he reached the
Major he leaned over and said:
'That's all right. You needn't report him. He's responsible to me, and
if he does it again I'll give him a talking to.'
'Now that is what I like! You mustn't think that I was moved by any
vengeful spirit, for that wasn't the case. It was duty--just a sense of
duty, that was all. My brother-in-law is one of the directors of the
road, and when he learns that you are going to reason with your brakeman
the very next time he brutally insults an unoffending old man it will
please him, you may be sure of that.'
The conductor did not look as joyous as one might have thought he would,
but on the contrary looked sickly and uncomfortable. He stood around a
little; then said:
'I think something ought to be done to him now. I'll discharge him.'
'Discharge him! What good would that do? Don't you think it would be
better wisdom to teach him better ways and keep him?'
'He insulted the old gentleman in presence of all these people. How
would it do to have him come and apologise in their presence?'
'I'll have him here right off. And I want to say this: If people would
do as you've done, and report such things to me instead of keeping mum
and going off and blackguarding the road, you'd see a different state of
things pretty soon. I'm much obliged to you.'
The brakeman came and apologised. After he was gone the Major said:
'Now you see how simple and easy that was. The ordinary citizen would
have accomplished nothing--the brother-in-law of a directory can
accomplish anything he wants to.'
'I have never met with a case. It is the honest truth--I never have.'
'Why didn't you let him go ahead and discharge the brakeman, in spite of
your favourite policy. You know he deserved it.'
The Major answered with something which really had a sort of distant
resemblance to impatience:
'If you would stop and think a moment you wouldn't ask such a question as
that. Is a brakeman a dog, that nothing but dogs' methods will do for
him? He is a man and has a man's fight for life. And he always has a
sister, or a mother, or wife and children to support. Always--there are
no exceptions. When you take his living away from him you take theirs
away too--and what have they done to you? Nothing. And where is the
profit in discharging an uncourteous brakeman and hiring another just
like him? It's unwisdom. Don't you see that the rational thing to do is
to reform the brakeman and keep him? Of course it is.'
'No, you are wrong. He has learned his lesson, he will throw no more
trains off the track. He is twice as valuable as he was before. I shall
keep him.'
We had only one more adventure on the train. Between Hartford and
Springfield the train-boy came shouting with an armful of literature, and
dropped a sample into a slumbering gentleman's lap, and the man woke up
with a start. He was very angry, and he and a couple of friends
discussed the outrage with much heat. They sent for the parlour-car
conductor and described the matter, and were determined to have the boy
expelled from his situation. The three complainants were wealthy Holyoke
merchants, and it was evident that the conductor stood in some awe of
them. He tried to pacify them, and explained that the boy was not under
his authority, but under that of one of the news companies; but he
accomplished nothing.
Then the Major volunteered some testimony for the defence. He said:
'I saw it all. You gentlemen have not meant to exaggerate the
circumstances, but still that is what you have done. The boy has done
nothing more than all train-boys do. If you want to get his ways
softened down and his manners reformed, I am with you and ready to help,
but it isn't fair to get him discharged without giving him a chance.'
But they were angry, and would hear of no compromise. They were well
acquainted with the President of the Boston and Albany, they said, and
would put everything aside next day and go up to Boston and fix that boy.
The Major said he would be on hand too, and would do what he could to
save the boy. One of the gentlemen looked him over and said:
'Yes; he is my uncle.'
The effect was satisfactory. There was an awkward silence for a minute
or more; then the hedging and the half-confessions of over-haste and
exaggerated resentment began, and soon everything was smooth and friendly
and sociable, and it was resolved to drop the matter and leave the boy's
bread and butter unmolested.
It turned out as I had expected: the President of the road was not the
Major's uncle at all--except by adoption, and for this day and train
only.
'You are at perfect liberty to resume your game, gentlemen; no one here
objects.'
One of them declined the risk, but the other one said he would like to
begin again if the Major would join him. So they spread an overcoat over
their knees and the game proceeded. Pretty soon the parlour-car
conductor arrived, and said, brusquely:
'There, there, gentlemen, that won't do. Put up the cards--it's not
allowed.'
'What idea?'
'Who did?'
'The company.'
'Then it isn't your order, after all, but the company's. Is that it?'
'Yes. But you don't stop playing! I have to require you to stop playing
immediately.'
'Nothing is gained by hurry, and often much is lost. Who authorised the
company to issue such an order?'
'But you forget that you are not the only person concerned. It may be a
matter of consequence to me. It is, indeed, a matter of very great
importance to me. I cannot violate a legal requirement of my country
without dishonouring myself; I cannot allow any man or corporation to
hamper my liberties with illegal rules--a thing which railway companies
are always trying to do--without dishonouring my citizenship. So I come
back to that question: By whose authority has the company issued this
order?'
'Mine, too. I doubt if the company has any right to issue such a rule.
This road runs through several States. Do you know what State we are in
now, and what its laws are in matters of this kind?'
'Its laws do not concern me, but the company's orders do. It is my duty
to stop this game, gentlemen, and it must be stopped.'
'I have nothing of the kind, but I have my orders, and that is
sufficient. They must be obeyed.'
'All in good time, perhaps. It depends. You say this order must be
obeyed. Must. It is a strong word. You see yourself how strong it is.
A wise company would not arm you with so drastic an order as this, of
course, without appointing a penalty for its infringement. Otherwise it
runs the risk of being a dead letter and a thing to laugh at. What is
the appointed penalty for an infringement of this law?'
'No.'
The conductor was silent and apparently troubled. The Major started a
new deal, and said:
'You see that you are helpless, and that the company has placed you in a
foolish position. You are furnished with an arrogant order, and you
deliver it in a blustering way, and when you come to look into the matter
you find you haven't any way of enforcing obedience.'
'But wait. The matter is not yet finished. I think you are mistaken
about your duty being ended; but if it really is, I myself have a duty to
perform yet.'
The conductor looked puzzled, and was thoughtful a moment; then he burst
out with:
'I seem to be getting myself into a scrape! It's all a muddle; I can't
make head or tail of it; it never happened before; they always knocked
under and never said a word, and so I never saw how ridiculous that
stupid order with no penalty is. I don't want to report anybody, and I
don't want to be reported--why, it might do me no end of harm! No do go
on with the game--play the whole day if you want to--and don't let's have
any more trouble about it!'
'No, I only sat down here to establish this gentleman's rights--he can
have his place now. But before won't you tell me what you think the
company made this rule for? Can you imagine an excuse for it? I mean a
rational one--an excuse that is not on its face silly, and the invention
of an idiot?'
'By gracious, you've hit it! I never thought of that before. The fact
is, it is a silly rule when you come to look into it.'
At this point the train conductor arrived, and was going to shut down the
game in a very high-handed fashion, but the parlour-car conductor stopped
him, and took him aside to explain. Nothing more was heard of the
matter.
I was ill in bed eleven days in Chicago and got no glimpse of the Fair,
for I was obliged to return East as soon as I was able to travel. The
Major secured and paid for a state-room in a sleeper the day before we
left, so that I could have plenty of room and be comfortable; but when we
arrived at the station a mistake had been made and our car had not been
put on. The conductor had reserved a section for us--it was the best he
could do, he said. But Major said we were not in a hurry, and would wait
for the car to be put on. The conductor responded, with pleasant irony:
'It may be that you are not in a hurry, just as you say, but we are.
Come, get aboard, gentlemen, get aboard--don't keep us waiting.'
But the Major would not get aboard himself nor allow me to do it. He
wanted his car, and said he must have it. This made the hurried and
perspiring conductor impatient, and he said:
'It's the best we can do--we can't do impossibilities. You will take the
section or go without. A mistake has been made and can't be rectified at
this late hour. It's a thing that happens now and then, and there is
nothing for it but to put up with it and make the best of it. Other
people do.'
'Ah, that is just it, you see. If they had stuck to their rights and
enforced them you wouldn't be trying to trample mine underfoot in this
bland way now. I haven't any disposition to give you unnecessary
trouble, but it is my duty to protect the next man from this kind of
imposition. So I must have my car. Otherwise I will wait in Chicago and
sue the company for violating its contract.'
'Indeed, I do.'
The conductor looked the Major over wonderingly, and then said:
When the station-master came he was a good deal annoyed--at the Major,
not at the person who had made the mistake. He was rather brusque, and
took the same position which the conductor had taken in the beginning;
but he failed to move the soft-spoken artilleryman, who still insisted
that he must have his car. However, it was plain that there was only one
strong side in this case, and that that side was the Major's. The
station-master banished his annoyed manner, and became pleasant and even
half-apologetic. This made a good opening for a compromise, and the
Major made a concession. He said he would give up the engaged
state-room, but he must have a state-room. After a deal of ransacking,
one was found whose owner was persuadable; he exchanged it for our
section, and we got away at last. The conductor called on us in the
evening, and was kind and courteous and obliging, and we had a long talk
and got to be good friends. He said he wished the public would make
trouble oftener--it would have a good effect. He said that the
railroads could not be expected to do their whole duty by the traveller
unless the traveller would take some interest in the matter himself.
I hoped that we were done reforming for the trip now, but it was not so.
In the hotel car, in the morning, the Major called for broiled chicken.
The waiter said:
'It's not in the bill of fare, sir; we do not serve anything but what is
in the bill.'
'Then all the more must I have broiled chicken. I do not like these
discriminations. Please hurry--bring me a broiled chicken.'
The waiter brought the steward, who explained in a low and polite voice
that the thing was impossible--it was against the rule, and the rule was
rigid.
The steward was puzzled, and did not quite know what to do. He began an
incoherent argument, but the conductor came along just then, and asked
what the difficulty was. The steward explained that here was a gentleman
who was insisting on having a chicken when it was dead against the rule
and not in the bill. The conductor said:
'Stick by your rules--you haven't any option. Wait a moment--is this the
gentleman?' Then he laughed and said: 'Never mind your rules--it's my
advice, and sound: give him anything he wants--don't get him started on
his rights. Give him whatever he asks for; and it you haven't got it,
stop the train and get it.'
The Major ate the chicken, but said he did it from a sense of duty and to
establish a principle, for he did not like chicken.
VIENNA, January 5--I find in this morning's papers the statement that the
Government of the United States has paid to the two members of the Peace
Commission entitled to receive money for their services 100,000 dollars
each for their six weeks' work in Paris.
For a long time we have been reaping damage from a couple of disastrous
precedents. One is the precedent of shabby pay to public servants
standing for the power and dignity of the Republic in foreign lands; the
other is a precedent condemning them to exhibit themselves officially in
clothes which are not only without grace or dignity, but are a pretty
loud and pious rebuke to the vain and frivolous costumes worn by the
other officials. To our day an American ambassador's official costume
remains under the reproach of these defects. At a public function in a
European court all foreign representatives except ours wear clothes which
in some way distinguish them from the unofficial throng, and mark them as
standing for their countries. But our representative appears in a plain
black swallow-tail, which stands for neither country, nor people. It has
no nationality. It is found in all countries; it is as international as
a night-shirt. It has no particular meaning; but our Government tries to
give it one; it tries to make it stand for Republican Simplicity, modesty
and unpretentiousness. Tries, and without doubt fails, for it is not
conceivable that this loud ostentation of simplicity deceives any one.
The statue that advertises its modesty with a fig-leaf really brings its
modesty under suspicion. Worn officially, our nonconforming swallow-tail
is a declaration of ungracious independence in the matter of manners, and
is uncourteous. It says to all around: 'In Rome we do not choose to do
as Rome does; we refuse to respect your tastes and your traditions; we
make no sacrifices to anyone's customs and prejudices; we yield no jot to
the courtesies of life; we prefer our manners, and intrude them here.'
That is not the true American spirit, and those clothes misrepresent us.
When a foreigner comes among us and trespasses against our customs and
our code of manners, we are offended, and justly so; but our Government
commands our ambassadors to wear abroad an official dress which is an
offence against foreign manners and customers; and the discredit of it
falls upon the nation.
The truth is, that for awhile during the present century, and up to
something short of forty years ago, we had a lucid interval, and dropped
the Republican Simplicity sham, and dressed our foreign representatives
in a handsome and becoming official costume. This was discarded
by-and-by, and the swallow-tail substituted. I believe it is not now
known which statesman brought about this change; but we all know that,
stupid as he was as to diplomatic proprieties in dress, he would not have
sent his daughter to a state ball in a corn-shucking costume, nor to a
corn-shucking in a state-ball costume, to be harshly criticised as an
ill-mannered offender against the proprieties of custom in both places.
And we know another thing, viz. that he himself would not have wounded
the tastes and feelings of a family of mourners by attending a funeral in
their house in a costume which was an offence against the dignities and
decorum prescribed by tradition and sanctified by custom. Yet that man
was so heedless as not to reflect that all the social customs of
civilised peoples are entitled to respectful observance, and that no man
with a right spirit of courtesy in him ever has any disposition to
transgress these customs.
I have not done with gratis suggestions yet. We made a great deal of
valuable advance when we instituted the office of ambassador. That lofty
rank endows its possessor with several times as much influence,
consideration, and effectiveness as the rank of minister bestows. For
the sake of the country's dignity and for the sake of her advantage
commercially, we should have ambassadors, not ministers, at the great
courts of the world.
City Salaries
American English
The ambassadors and ministers of foreign nations not only have generous
salaries, but their Governments provide them with money wherewith to pay
a considerable part of their hospitality bills. I believe our Government
pays no hospitality bills except those incurred by the navy. Through
this concession to the navy, that arm is able to do us credit in foreign
parts; and certainly that is well and politic. But why the Government
does not think it well and politic that our diplomats should be able to
do us like credit abroad is one of those mysterious inconsistencies which
have been puzzling me ever since I stopped trying to understand baseball
and took up statesmanship as a pastime.
Ours is the only country of first importance that pays its foreign
representatives trifling salaries. If we were poor, we could not find
great fault with these economies, perhaps--at least one could find a sort
of plausible excuse for them. But we are not poor; and the excuse fails.
As shown above, some of our important diplomatic representatives receive
$12,000; others, $17,500. These salaries are all ham and lemonade, and
unworthy of the flag. When we have a rich ambassador in London or Paris,
he lives as the ambassador of a country like ours ought to live, and it
costs him $100,000 a year to do it. But why should we allow him to pay
that out of his private pocket? There is nothing fair about it; and the
Republic is no proper subject for any one's charity. In several cases
our salaries of $12,000 should be $50,000; and all of the salaries of
$17,500 ought to be $75,000 or $100,000, since we pay no representative's
house-rent. Our State Department realises the mistake which we are
making, and would like to rectify it, but it has not the power.
LUCK
This verdict was a great surprise to me. If its subject had been
Napoleon, or Socrates, or Solomon, my astonishment could not have been
greater.
Some days later came the explanation of this strange remark, and this is
what the Reverend told me.
I took him aside, and found that he knew a little of Caesar's history;
and as he didn't know anything else, I went to work and drilled him like
a galley-slave on a certain line of stock questions concerning Caesar
which I knew would be used. If you'll believe me, he went through with
flying colours on examination day! He went through on that purely
superficial 'cram', and got compliments, too, while others, who knew a
thousand times more than he, got plucked. By some strangely lucky
accident--an accident not likely to happen twice in a century--he was
asked no question outside of the narrow limits of his drill.
Now of course the thing that would expose him and kill him at last was
mathematics. I resolved to make his death as easy as I could; so I
drilled him and crammed him, and crammed him and drilled him, just on the
line of questions which the examiner would be most likely to use, and
then launched him on his fate. Well, sir, try to conceive of the result:
to my consternation, he took the first prize! And with it he got a
perfect ovation in the way of compliments.
The Crimean war had just broken out. Of course there had to be a war, I
said to myself: we couldn't have peace and give this donkey a chance to
die before he is found out. I waited for the earthquake. It came. And
it made me reel when it did come. He was actually gazetted to a
captaincy in a marching regiment! Better men grow old and gray in the
service before they climb to a sublimity like that. And who could ever
have foreseen that they would go and put such a load of responsibility on
such green and inadequate shoulders? I could just barely have stood it
if they had made him a cornet; but a captain--think of it! I thought my
hair would turn white.
And there--oh dear, it was awful. Blunders? why, he never did anything
but blunder. But, you see, nobody was in the fellow's secret--everybody
had him focused wrong, and necessarily misinterpreted his performance
every time--consequently they took his idiotic blunders for inspirations
of genius; they did honestly! His mildest blunders were enough to make a
man in his right mind cry; and they did make me cry--and rage and rave
too, privately. And the thing that kept me always in a sweat of
apprehension was the fact that every fresh blunder he made increased the
lustre of his reputation! I kept saying to myself, he'll get so high
that when discovery does finally come it will be like the sun falling out
of the sky.
He went right along up, from grade to grade, over the dead bodies of his
superiors, until at last, in the hottest moment of the battle of ...
down went our colonel, and my heart jumped into my mouth, for Scoresby
was next in rank! Now for it, said I; we'll all land in Sheol in ten
minutes, sure.
The battle was awfully hot; the allies were steadily giving way all over
the field. Our regiment occupied a position that was vital; a blunder
now must be destruction. At this critical moment, what does this
immortal fool do but detach the regiment from its place and order a
charge over a neighbouring hill where there wasn't a suggestion of an
enemy! 'There you go!' I said to myself; 'this is the end at last.'
And away we did go, and were over the shoulder of the hill before the
insane movement could be discovered and stopped. And what did we find?
An entire and unsuspected Russian army in reserve! And what happened?
We were eaten up? That is necessarily what would have happened in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. But no; those Russians argued that
no single regiment would come browsing around there at such a time. It
must be the entire English army, and that the sly Russian game was
detected and blocked; so they turned tail, and away they went, pell-mell,
over the hill and down into the field, in wild confusion, and we after
them; they themselves broke the solid Russia centre in the field, and
tore through, and in no time there was the most tremendous rout you ever
saw, and the defeat of the allies was turned into a sweeping and splendid
victory! Marshal Canrobert looked on, dizzy with astonishment,
admiration, and delight; and sent right off for Scoresby, and hugged him,
and decorated him on the field in presence of all the armies!
And what was Scoresby's blunder that time? Merely the mistaking his
right hand for his left--that was all. An order had come to him to fall
back and support our right; and instead he fell forward and went over the
hill to the left. But the name he won that day as a marvellous military
genius filled the world with his glory, and that glory will never fade
while history books last.
He is just as good and sweet and lovable and unpretending as a man can
be, but he doesn't know enough to come in when it rains. He has been
pursued, day by day and year by year, by a most phenomenal and
astonishing luckiness. He has been a shining soldier in all our wars for
half a generation; he has littered his military life with blunders, and
yet has never committed one that didn't make him a knight or a baronet or
a lord or something. Look at his breast; why, he is just clothed in
domestic and foreign decorations. Well, sir, every one of them is a
record of some shouting stupidity or other; and, taken together, they are
proof that the very best thing in all this world that can befall a man is
to be born lucky.
There was a good deal of pleasant gossip about old Captain 'Hurricane'
Jones, of the Pacific Ocean--peace to his ashes! Two or three of us
present had known him; I, particularly well, for I had made four
sea-voyages with him. He was a very remarkable man. He was born on a
ship; he picked up what little education he had among his ship-mates;
he began life in the forecastle, and climbed grade by grade to the
captaincy. More than fifty years of his sixty-five were spent at sea.
He had sailed all oceans, seen all lands, and borrowed a tint from all
climates. When a man has been fifty years at sea, he necessarily knows
nothing of men, nothing of the world but its surface, nothing of the
world's thought, nothing of the world's learning but it's a B C, and that
blurred and distorted by the unfocussed lenses of an untrained mind.
Such a man is only a gray and bearded child. That is what old Hurricane
Jones was--simply an innocent, lovable old infant. When his spirit was
in repose he was as sweet and gentle as a girl; when his wrath was up he
was a hurricane that made his nickname seem tamely descriptive. He was
formidable in a fight, for he was of powerful build and dauntless
courage. He was frescoed from head to heel with pictures and mottoes
tattooed in red and blue India ink. I was with him one voyage when he
got his last vacant space tattooed; this vacant space was around his left
ankle. During three days he stumped about the ship with his ankle bare
and swollen, and this legend gleaming red and angry out from a clouding
of India ink: 'Virtue is its own R'd.' (There was a lack of room.) He
was deeply and sincerely pious, and swore like a fish-woman. He
considered swearing blameless, because sailors would not understand an
order unillumined by it. He was a profound Biblical scholar--that is, he
thought he was. He believed everything in the Bible, but he had his own
methods of arriving at his beliefs. He was of the 'advanced' school of
thinkers, and applied natural laws to the interpretation of all miracles,
somewhat on the plan of the people who make the six days of creation six
geological epochs, and so forth. Without being aware of it, he was a
rather severe satirist on modern scientific religionists. Such a man as
I have been describing is rabidly fond of disquisition and argument; one
knows that without being told it.
One trip the captain had a clergyman on board, but did not know he was a
clergyman, since the passenger list did not betray the fact. He took a
great liking to this Rev. Mr. Peters, and talked with him a great deal:
told him yarns, gave him toothsome scraps of personal history, and wove a
glittering streak of profanity through his garrulous fabric that was
refreshing to a spirit weary of the dull neutralities of undecorated
speech. One day the captain said, 'Peters, do you ever read the Bible?'
'Well--yes.'
'I judge it ain't often, by the way you say it. Now, you tackle it in
dead earnest once, and you'll find it'll pay. Don't you get discouraged,
but hang right on. First you won't understand it; but by-and-by things
will begin to clear up, and then you wouldn't lay it down to--ear.'
'And it's so too. There ain't a book that begins with it. It lays over
'em all, Peters. There's some pretty tough things in it--there ain't any
getting around that--but you stick to them and think them out, and when
once you get on the inside everything's plain as day.'
'Yes, sir! the miracles, too. Every one of them. Now, there's that
business with the prophets of Baal; like enough that stumped you?'
'Own up, now; it stumped you. Well, I don't wonder. You hadn't any
experience in ravelling such things out, and naturally it was too many
for you. Would you like to have me explain that thing to you, and show
you how to get at the meat of these matters?'
'So next morning all the Children of Israel and their parents and the
other people gathered themselves together. Well, here was that great
crowd of prophets of Baal packed together on one side, and Isaac walking
up and down all alone on the other, putting up his job. When time was
called, Isaac let on to be comfortable and indifferent; told the other
team to take the first innings. So they went at it, the whole four
hundred and fifty, praying around the altar, very hopefully, and doing
their level best. They prayed an hour--two hours--three hours--and so
on, plumb till noon. It wa'n't any use; they hadn't took a trick. Of
course they felt kind of ashamed before all those people, and well they
might. Now, what would a magnanimous man do? Keep still, wouldn't he?
Of course. What did Isaac do? He graveled the prophets of Baal every
way he could think of. Says he, "You don't speak up loud enough; your
god's asleep, like enough, or may be he's taking a walk; you want to
holler, you know," or words to that effect; I don't recollect the exact
language. Mind I don't apologise for Isaac; he had his faults.
'Well, the prophets of Baal prayed along the best they knew how all the
afternoon, and never raised a spark. At last, about sundown, they were
all tuckered out, and they owned up and quit.
'What does Isaac do, now? He steps up and says to some friends of his,
there, "Pour four barrels of water on the altar!" Everybody was
astonished; for the other side had prayed at it dry, you know, and got
whitewashed. They poured it on. Says he, "Heave on four more barrels."
Then he says, "Heave on four more." Twelve barrels, you see, altogether.
The water ran all over the altar, and all down the sides, and filled up a
trench around it that would hold a couple of hogsheads--"measures," it
says: I reckon it means about a hogshead. Some of the people were going
to put on their things and go, for they allowed he was crazy. They
didn't know Isaac. Isaac knelt down and began to pray: he strung along,
and strung along, about the heathen in distant lands, and about the
sister churches, and about the state and the country at large, and about
those that's in authority in the government, and all the usual programme,
you know, till everybody had got tired and gone to thinking about
something else, and then, all of a sudden, when nobody was noticing, he
outs with a match and rakes it on the under side of his leg, and pff! up
the whole thing blazes like a house afire! Twelve barrels of water?
Petroleum, sir, PETROLEUM! that's what it was!'
'Petroleum, captain?'
'Yes, sir; the country was full of it. Isaac knew all about that. You
read the Bible. Don't you worry about the tough places. They ain't
tough when you come to think them out and throw light on them. There
ain't a thing in the Bible but what is true; all you want is to go
prayerfully to work and cipher out how 'twas done.'
Here in Vienna in these closing days of 1897 one's blood gets no chance
to stagnate. The atmosphere is brimful of political electricity. All
conversation is political; every man is a battery, with brushes overworn,
and gives out blue sparks when you set him going on the common topic.
Everybody has an opinion, and lets you have it frank and hot, and out of
this multitude of counsel you get merely confusion and despair. For no
one really understands this political situation, or can tell you what is
going to be the outcome of it.
Things have happened here recently which would set any country but
Austria on fire from end to end, and upset the Government to a certainty;
but no one feels confident that such results will follow here. Here,
apparently, one must wait and see what will happen, then he will know,
and not before; guessing is idle; guessing cannot help the matter. This
is what the wise tell you; they all say it; they say it every day, and it
is the sole detail upon which they all agree.
There is some approach to agreement upon another point: that there will
be no revolution. Men say: 'Look at our history, revolutions have not
been in our line; and look at our political map, its construction is
unfavourable to an organised uprising, and without unity what could a
revolt accomplish? It is disunion which has held our empire together for
centuries, and what it has done in the past it may continue to do now and
in the future.'
That seems to confirm and justify the prevalent Austrian faith that in
this confusion of unrelated and irreconcilable elements, this condition
of incurable disunion, there is strength--for the Government. Nearly
every day some one explains to me that a revolution would not succeed
here. 'It couldn't, you know. Broadly speaking, all the nations in the
empire hate the Government--but they all hate each other too, and with
devoted and enthusiastic bitterness; no two of them can combine; the
nation that rises must rise alone; then the others would joyfully join
the Government against her, and she would have just a fly's chance
against a combination of spiders. This Government is entirely
independent. It can go its own road, and do as it pleases; it has
nothing to fear. In countries like England and America, where there is
one tongue and the public interests are common, the Government must take
account of public opinion; but in Austria-Hungary there are nineteen
public opinions--one for each state. No--two or three for each state,
since there are two or three nationalities in each. A Government cannot
satisfy all these public opinions; it can only go through the motions of
trying. This Government does that. It goes through the motions, and
they do not succeed; but that does not worry the Government much.'
The next man will give you some further information. 'The Government has
a policy--a wise one--and sticks to it. This policy is--tranquillity:
keep this hive of excitable nations as quiet as possible; encourage them
to amuse themselves with things less inflammatory that politics. To this
end it furnishes them an abundance of Catholic priests to teach them to
be docile and obedient, and to be diligent in acquiring ignorance about
things here below, and knowledge about the kingdom of heaven, to whose
historic delights they are going to add the charm of their society
by-and-by; and further--to this same end--it cools off the newspapers
every morning at five o'clock, whenever warm events are happening.'
There is a censor of the press, and apparently he is always on duty and
hard at work. A copy of each morning paper is brought to him at five
o'clock. His official wagons wait at the doors of the newspaper offices
and scud to him with the first copies that come from the press. His
company of assistants read every line in these papers, and mark
everything which seems to have a dangerous look; then he passes final
judgment upon these markings. Two things conspire to give to the results
a capricious and unbalanced look: his assistants have diversified notions
as to what is dangerous and what isn't; he can't get time to examine
their criticisms in much detail; and so sometimes the very same matter
which is suppressed in one paper fails to be damned in another one, and
gets published in full feather and unmodified. Then the paper in which
it was suppressed blandly copies the forbidden matter into its evening
edition--provokingly giving credit and detailing all the circumstances in
courteous and inoffensive language--and of course the censor cannot say a
word.
Sometimes the censor sucks all the blood out of a newspaper and leaves it
colourless and inane; sometimes he leaves it undisturbed, and lets it
talk out its opinions with a frankness and vigour hardly to be surpassed,
I think, in the journals of any country. Apparently the censor sometimes
revises his verdicts upon second thought, for several times lately he has
suppressed journals after their issue and partial distribution. The
distributed copies are then sent for by the censor and destroyed. I have
two of these, but at the time they were sent for I could not remember
what I had done with them.
If the censor did his work before the morning edition was printed, he
would be less of an inconvenience than he is; but, of course, the papers
cannot wait many minutes after five o'clock to get his verdict; they
might as well go out of business as do that; so they print and take their
chances. Then, if they get caught by a suppression, they must strike out
the condemned matter and print the edition over again. That delays the
issue several hours, and is expensive besides. The Government gets the
suppressed edition for nothing. If it bought it, that would be joyful,
and would give great satisfaction. Also, the edition would be larger.
Some of the papers do not replace the condemned paragraphs with other
matter; they merely snatch they out and leave blanks behind--mourning
blanks, marked 'Confiscated'.
Then the music began. Badeni's voyage, instead of being smooth, was
disappointingly rough from the start. The Government must get the
Ausgleich through. It must not fail. Badeni's majority was ready to
carry it through; but the minority was determined to obstruct it and
delay it until the obnoxious Czech-language measure should be shelved.
The ten-year arrangement was due a year ago, but failed to connect. At
least completely. A year's compromise was arranged. A new arrangement
must be effected before the last day of this year. Otherwise the two
countries become separate entities. The Emperor would still be King of
Hungary--that is, King of an independent foreign country. There would be
Hungarian custom-houses on the Austrian border, and there would be a
Hungarian army and a Hungarian foreign office. Both countries would be
weakened by this, both would suffer damage.
The Opposition in the House, although in the minority, had a good weapon
to fight with in the pending Ausgleich. If it could delay the Ausgleich
a few weeks, the Government would doubtless have to withdraw the hated
language ordinance or lose Hungary.
The Opposition began its fight. Its arms were the Rules of the House.
It was soon manifest that by applying these Rules ingeniously it could
make the majority helpless, and keep it so as long as it pleased. It
could shut off business every now and then with a motion to adjourn. It
could require the ayes and noes on the motion, and use up thirty minutes
on that detail. It could call for the reading and verification of the
minutes of the preceding meeting, and use up half a day in that way. It
could require that several of its members be entered upon the list of
permitted speakers previously to the opening of a sitting; and as there
is no time-limit, further delays could thus be accomplished.
These were all lawful weapons, and the men of the Opposition (technically
called the Left) were within their rights in using them. They used them
to such dire purpose that all parliamentary business was paralysed. The
Right (the Government side) could accomplish nothing. Then it had a
saving idea. This idea was a curious one. It was to have the President
and the Vice-Presidents of the Parliament trample the Rules under foot
upon occasion!
And now took place that memorable sitting of the House which broke two
records. It lasted the best part of two days and a night, surpassing by
half an hour the longest sitting known to the world's previous
parliamentary history, and breaking the long-speech record with Dr.
Lecher's twelve-hour effort, the longest flow of unbroken talk that ever
came out of one mouth since the world began.
At 8.45 on the evening of the 28th of October, when the House had been
sitting a few minutes short of ten hours, Dr. Lecher was granted the
floor. It was a good place for theatrical effects. I think that no
other Senate House is so shapely as this one, or so richly and showily
decorated. Its plan is that of an opera-house. Up toward the straight
side of it--the stage side--rise a couple of terraces of desks for the
ministry, and the official clerks or secretaries--terraces thirty feet
long, and each supporting about half a dozen desks with spaces between
them. Above these is the President's terrace, against the wall. Along
it are distributed the proper accommodations for the presiding officer
and his assistants. The wall is of richly coloured marble highly
polished, its paneled sweep relieved by fluted columns and pilasters of
distinguished grace and dignity, which glow softly and frostily in the
electric light. Around the spacious half-circle of the floor bends the
great two-storied curve of the boxes, its frontage elaborately ornamented
and sumptuously gilded. On the floor of the House the 425 desks radiate
fanwise from the President's tribune.
The galleries are crowded on this particular evening, for word has gone
about that the Ausgleich is before the House; that the President, Ritter
von Abrahamowicz, has been throttling the Rules; that the Opposition are
in an inflammable state in consequence, and that the night session is
likely to be of an exciting sort.
The gallery guests are fashionably dressed, and the finery of the women
makes a bright and pretty show under the strong electric light. But down
on the floor there is no costumery.
The deputies are dressed in day clothes; some of the clothes neat and
trim, others not; there may be three members in evening dress, but not
more. There are several Catholic priests in their long black gowns, and
with crucifixes hanging from their necks. No member wears his hat. One
may see by these details that the aspects are not those of an evening
sitting of an English House of Commons, but rather those of a sitting of
our House of Representatives.
To change the tense. At the time of which I have just been speaking the
crowds in the galleries were gazing at the stage and the pit with rapt
interest and expectancy. One half of the great fan of desks was in
effect empty, vacant; in the other half several hundred members were
bunched and jammed together as solidly as the bristles in a brush; and
they also were waiting and expecting. Presently the Chair delivered this
utterance:
Then burst out such another wild and frantic and deafening clamour as has
not been heard on this planet since the last time the Comanches surprised
a white settlement at night. Yells from the Left, counter-yells from the
Right, explosions of yells from all sides at once, and all the air sawed
and pawed and clawed and cloven by a writhing confusion of gesturing arms
and hands. Out of the midst of this thunder and turmoil and tempest rose
Dr. Lecher, serene and collected, and the providential length of his
enabled his head to show out of it. He began his twelve-hour speech. At
any rate, his lips could be seen to move, and that was evidence. On high
sat the President, imploring order, with his long hands put together as
in prayer, and his lips visibly but not hearably speaking. At intervals
he grasped his bell and swung it up and down with vigour, adding its keen
clamour to the storm weltering there below.
In the sudden lull which followed, the President answered, 'Dr. Lecher
has the floor.'
Wolf. 'I demand the floor for the introduction of a formal notion.
[Pause]. Mr. President, are you going to grant it, or not? [Crash of
approval from the Left.] I will keep on demanding the floor till I get
it.'
P. 'I call Representative Wolf to order. Dr. Lecher has the floor.'
Wolf. 'Mr. President, are you going to observe the Rules of this House?'
[Tempest of applause and confused ejaculations from the Left--a boom and
roar which long endured, and stopped all business for the time being.]
Dr. von Pessler. 'By the Rules motions are in order, and the Chair must
put them to vote.'
For answer the President (who is a Pole--I make this remark in passing)
began to jangle his bell with energy at the moment that that wild
pandemonium of voices broke out again.
Wolf (hearable above the storm). 'Mr. President, I demand the floor. We
intend to find out, here and now, which is the hardest, a Pole's skull or
a German's!'
This brought out a perfect cyclone of satisfaction from the Left. In the
midst of it someone again moved an Adjournment. The President blandly
answered that Dr. Lecher had the floor. Which was true; and he was
speaking, too, calmly, earnestly, and argumentatively; and the official
stenographers had left their places and were at his elbows taking down
his words, he leaning and orating into their ears--a most curious and
interesting scene.
Dr. von Pessler (to the Chair). 'Do not drive us to extremities!'
The tempest burst out again: yells of approval from the Left, catcalls
and ironical laughter from the Right. At this point a new and most
effective noise-maker was pressed into service. Each desk has an
extension, consisting of a removable board eighteen inches long, six
wide, and a half-inch thick. A member pulled one of these out and began
to belabour the top of his desk with it. Instantly other members
followed suit, and perhaps you can imagine the result. Of all
conceivable rackets it is the most ear-splitting, intolerable, and
altogether fiendish.
The persecuted President leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes,
clasped his hands in his lap, and a look of pathetic resignation crept
over his long face. It is the way a country schoolmaster used to look in
days long past when he had refused his school a holiday and it had risen
against him in ill-mannered riot and violence and insurrection. Twice a
motion to adjourn had been offered--a motion always in order in other
Houses, and doubtless so in this one also. The President had refused to
put these motions. By consequence, he was not in a pleasant place now,
and was having a right hard time. Votes upon motions, whether carried or
defeated, could make endless delay, and postpone the Ausgleich to next
century.
Wolf (to the Chair). 'Thunder and lightning! look at the Rule governing
the case!'
Kronawetter. 'I move the close of the sitting! And I demand the ayes
and noes!'
Wolf (to the Chair, in a stentorian voice which cleaves its way through
the storm). 'It is by such brutalities as these that you drive us to
extremities! Are you waiting till someone shall throw into your face the
word that shall describe what you are bringing about?[1] [Tempest of
insulted fury from the Right.] Is that what you are waiting for, old
Grayhead?' [Long-continued clatter of desk-boards from the Left, with
shouts of 'The vote! the vote!' An ironical shout from the Right, 'Wolf
is boss!']
Wolf (banging on his desk with his desk-board). 'I demand the floor for
my motion! I won't stand this trampling of the Rules under foot--no, not
if I die for it! I will never yield. You have got to stop me by force.
Have I the floor?'
Dr. Lecher speaks on. Wolf turns upon him with an offensive innuendo.
Dr. Lecher. 'Mr. Wolf, I beg you to refrain from that sort of
suggestions.' [Storm of hand-clapping from the Right.]
This was applause from the enemy, for Lecher himself, like Wolf, was an
Obstructionist.
Wolf growls to Lecher, 'You can scribble that applause in your album!'
Wolf (slam-banging with his desk-board). 'I will force this matter! Are
you going to grant me the floor, or not?'
And still the sergeant-at-arms did not appear. It was because there
wasn't any. It is a curious thing, but the Chair has no effectual means
of compelling order.
Wolf (banging with his board). 'I demand the floor. I will not yield!'
For another twenty or thirty minutes Wolf went on banging with his board
and demanding his rights; then at last the weary President threatened to
summon the dread order-maker. But both his manner and his words were
reluctant. Evidently it grieved him to have to resort to this dire
extremity. He said to Wolf, 'If this goes on, I shall feel obliged to
summon the Ordner, and beg him to restore order in the House.'
Wolf. 'I'd like to see you do it! Suppose you fetch in a few policemen
too! [Great tumult.] Are you going to put my motion to adjourn, or not?'
Dr. Lecher continues his speech. Wolf accompanies him with his
board-clatter.
The President despatches the Ordner, Dr. Lang (himself a deputy), on his
order-restoring mission. Wolf, with his board uplifted for defence,
confronts the Ordner with a remark which Boss Tweed might have translated
into 'Now let's see what you are going to do about it!' [Noise and tumult
all over the House.]
Wolf stands upon his rights, and says he will maintain them until he is
killed in his tracks. Then he resumes his banging, the President jangles
his bell and begs for order, and the rest of the House augments the
racket the best it can.
I will explain that Dr. Lecher was not making a twelve-hour speech for
pastime, but for an important purpose. It was the Government's intention
to push the Ausgleich through its preliminary stages in this one sitting
(for which it was the Order of the Day), and then by vote refer it to a
select committee. It was the Majority's scheme--as charged by the
Opposition--to drown debate upon the bill by pure noise--drown it out and
stop it. The debate being thus ended, the vote upon the reference would
follow--with victory for the Government. But into the Government's
calculations had not entered the possibility of a single-barrelled speech
which should occupy the entire time-limit of the setting, and also get
itself delivered in spite of all the noise. Goliath was not expecting
David. But David was there; and during twelve hours he tranquilly pulled
statistical, historical, and argumentative pebbles out of his scrip and
slung them at the giant; and when he was done he was victor, and the day
was saved.
The subject was a peculiarly difficult one, and it would have troubled
any other deputy to stick to it three hours without exhausting his
ammunition, because it required a vast and intimate knowledge--detailed
and particularised knowledge--of the commercial, railroading, financial,
and international banking relations existing between two great
sovereignties, Hungary and the Empire. But Dr. Lecher is President of
the Board of Trade of his city of Brunn, and was master of the situation.
His speech was not formally prepared. He had a few notes jotted down for
his guidance; he had his facts in his head; his heard was in his work;
and for twelve hours he stood there, undisturbed by the clamour around
him, and with grace and ease and confidence poured out the riches of his
mind, in closely reasoned arguments, clothed in eloquent and faultless
phrasing.
There was but one way for Dr. Lecher to hold the floor--he must stay on
his legs. If he should sit down to rest a moment, the floor would be
taken from him by the enemy in the Chair. When he had been talking three
or four hours he himself proposed an adjournment, in order that he might
get some rest from his wearing labours; but he limited his motion with
the condition that if it was lost he should be allowed to continue
his speech, and if it was carried he should have the floor at
the next sitting. Wolf was now appeased, and withdrew his own
thousand-times-offered motion, and Dr. Lecher's was voted upon--and lost.
So he went on speaking.
By one o'clock in the morning, excitement and noise-making had tired out
nearly everybody but the orator. Gradually the seats of the Right
underwent depopulation; the occupants had slipped out to the
refreshment-rooms to eat and drink, or to the corridors to chat. Some
one remarked that there was no longer a quorum present, and moved a call
of the House. The Chair (Vice-President Dr. Kramarz) refused to put it to
vote. There was a small dispute over the legality of this ruling, but
the Chair held its ground.
The members of the Majority went out by detachments from time to time and
took naps upon sofas in the reception-rooms; and also refreshed
themselves with food and drink--in quantities nearly unbelievable--but
the Minority stayed loyally by their champion. Some distinguished
deputies of the Majority stayed by him too, compelled thereto by
admiration of his great performance. When a man has been speaking eight
hours, is it conceivable that he can still be interesting, still
fascinating? When Dr. Lecher had been speaking eight hours he was still
compactly surrounded by friends who would not leave him, and by foes (of
all parties) who could not; and all hung enchanted and wondering upon his
words, and all testified their admiration with constant and cordial
outbursts of applause. Surely this was a triumph without precedent in
history.
During the twelve-hour effort friends brought to the orator three glasses
of wine, four cups of coffee, and one glass of beer--a most stingy
re-enforcement of his wasting tissues, but the hostile Chair would permit
no addition to it. But, no matter, the Chair could not beat that man.
He was a garrison holding a fort, and was not to be starved out.
When he had been speaking eight hours his pulse was 72; when he had
spoken twelve, it was 100.
'What we require, and shall fight for with all lawful weapons, is a
formal, comprehensive, and definitive solution and settlement of these
vexed matters. We desire the restoration of the earlier condition of
things; the cancellation of all this incapable Government's pernicious
trades with Hungary; and then--release from the sorry burden of the
Badeni ministry!
'I voice the hope--I know not if it will be fulfilled--I voice the deep
and sincere and patriotic hope that the committee into whose hands this
bill will eventually be committed will take its stand upon high ground,
and will return the Ausgleich-Provisorium to this House in a form which
shall make it the protector and promoter alike of the great interests
involved and of the honour of our fatherland.' After a pause, turning
towards the Government benches: 'But in any case, gentlemen of the
Majority, make sure of this: henceforth, as before, you find us at our
post. The Germans of Austria will neither surrender nor die!'
Then burst a storm of applause which rose and fell, rose and fell, burst
out again and again and again, explosion after explosion, hurricane after
hurricane, with no apparent promise of ever coming to an end; and
meantime the whole Left was surging and weltering about the champion, all
bent upon wringing his hand and congratulating him and glorifying him.
Finally he got away, and went home and ate five loaves and twelve baskets
of fish, read the morning papers, slept three hours, took a short drive,
then returned to the House, and sat out the rest of the thirty-three-hour
session.
Parliament was adjourned for a week--to let the members cool off,
perhaps--a sacrifice of precious time; for but two months remained in
which to carry the all-important Ausgleich to a consummation.
There had been an incident. The dignity of the House had been wounded by
improprieties indulged in in its presence by a couple of the members.
This matter was placed in the hands of a committee to determine where the
guilt lay and the degree of it, and also to suggest the punishment. The
chairman of the committee brought in his report. By this it appeared
that in the course of a speech, Deputy Schrammel said that religion had
no proper place in the public schools--it was a private matter.
Whereupon Deputy Gregorig shouted, 'How about free love!'
To this, Deputy Iro flung out this retort: 'Soda-water at the Wimberger!'
This appeared to deeply offend Deputy Gregorig, who shouted back at Iro,
'You cowardly blatherskite, say that again!'
The committee had sat three hours. Gregorig had apologised. Iro
explained that he didn't say anything about soda-water at the Wimberger.
He explained in writing, and was very explicit: 'I declare upon my word
of honour that I did not say the words attributed to me.'
The committee did not officially know why the apparently inconsequential
reference to soda-water at the Wimberger should move Deputy Gregorig to
call the utterer of it a cowardly blatherskite; still, after proper
deliberation, it was of the opinion that the House ought to formally
censure the whole business. This verdict seems to have been regarded as
sharply severe. I think so because Deupty Dr. Lueger, Burgermeister of
Vienna, felt it a duty to soften the blow to his friend Gregorig by
showing that the soda-water remark was not so innocuous as it might look;
that, indeed, Gregorig's tough retory was justifiable--and he proceeded
to explain why. He read a number of scandalous post-cards which he
intimated had proceeded from Iro, as indicated by the handwriting, though
they were anonymous. Some of them were posted to Gregorig at his place
of business and could have been read by all his subordinates; the others
were posted to Gregorig's wife. Lueger did not say--but everybody knew
--that the cards referred to a matter of town gossip which made Mr.
Gregorig a chief actor in a tavern scene where siphon-squirting played a
prominent and humorous part, and wherein women had a share.
There were several of the cards; more than several, in fact; no fewer
than five were sent in one day. Dr. Lueger read some of them, and
described others. Some of them had pictures on them; one a picture of a
hog with a monstrous snout, and beside it a squirting soda-siphon; below
it some sarcastic doggerel.
Gregorig dealt in shirts, cravats, etc. One of the cards bore these
words: 'Much-respected Deputy and collar-sewer--or stealer.'
Another: 'Would you mind telling me if....' Comment by Dr. Lueger: 'The
rest of it is not properly readable.'
This may have had a modifying effect upon the phraseology of the
membership for a while, and upon its general exuberance also, but it was
not for long. As has been seen, it had become lively once more on the
night of the Long Sitting. At the next sitting after the long one there
was certainly no lack of liveliness. The President was persistently
ignoring the Rules of the House in the interest of the government side,
and the Minority were in an unappeasable fury about it. The ceaseless
din and uproar, the shouting and stamping and desk-banging, were
deafening, but through it all burst voices now and then that made
themselves heard. Some of the remarks were of a very candid sort, and I
believe that if they had been uttered in our House of Representatives
they would have attracted attention. I will insert some samples here.
Not in their order, but selected on their merits:
Mr. Mayreder (to the President). 'You have lied! You conceded the floor
to me; make it good, or you have lied!'
There is a moment's lull, and Dr. Lueger begins his speech. Graceful,
handsome man, with winning manners and attractive bearing, a bright and
easy speaker, and is said to know how to trim his political sails to
catch any favouring wind that blows. He manages to say a few words, then
the tempest overwhelms him again.
Wolf stops reading his paper a moment to say a drastic thing about Lueger
and his Christian-Social pieties, which sets the C.S.S. in a sort of
frenzy.
Vielohlawek. 'It's a pity that such man should be leader of the Germans;
he disgraces the German name!'
Dr. Scheicher. 'It's a shame that the like of him should insult us.'
Dr. Lueger (to Wolf). 'You'd better worry a trifle over your Iro's word
of honour. You are behaving like a street arab.'
Dr. Lueger. 'And these shameless creatures are the leaders of the German
People's Party!'
Meantime Wolf goes whooping along with his newspaper readings in great
contentment.
Dr. Pattai. 'Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! You haven't the floor!'
Dr. Lueger (to Wolf, raising his voice strenuously above the storm).
'You are a wholly honourless street brat!' [A voice, 'Fire the
rapscallion out!' But Wolf's soul goes marching noisily on, just the
same.]
Schonerer (vast and muscular, and endowed with the most powerful voice in
the Reichsrath; comes ploughing down through the standing crowds, red,
and choking with anger; halts before Deputy Wohlmeyer, grabs a rule and
smashes it with a blow upon a desk, threatens Wohlmeyer's face with his
fist, and bellows out some personalities, and a promise). 'Only you
wait--we'll teach you!' [A whirlwind of offensive retorts assails him
from the band of meek and humble Christian Socialists compacted around
their leader, that distinguished religious expert, Dr. Lueger,
Burgermeister of Vienna. Our breath comes in excited gasps now, and we
are full of hope. We imagine that we are back fifty years ago in the
Arkansas Legislature, and we think we know what is going to happen, and
are glad we came, and glad we are up in the gallery, out of the way,
where we can see the whole thing and yet not have to supply any of the
material for the inquest. However, as it turns out, our confidence is
abused, our hopes are misplaced.]
Dr. Pattai (wildly excited). 'You quiet down, or we shall turn ourselves
loose! There will be cuffing of ears!'
Vieholawek. 'I would rather take my hat off to a Jew than to Wolf!'
Strohbach (to Wolf). 'Jew flunky! Here we have been fighting the Jews
for ten years, and now you are helping them to power again. How much do
you get for it?'
Remark flung across the House to Schonerer: 'Die Grossmutter auf dem
Misthaufen erzeugt worden!'
Schneider. 'Brothel-knight!'
The ladies in the gallery were learning. That was well; for by-and-by
ladies will form a part of the membership of all the legislatures in the
world; as soon as they can prove competency they will be admitted. At
present, men only are competent to legislate; therefore they look down
upon women, and would feel degraded if they had to have them for
colleagues in their high calling.
During a momentary lull Dr. Lueger gets a hearing for three sentences of
his speech. The demand and require that the President shall suppress the
four noisiest members of the Opposition.
Schonerer uplifts his fog-horn of a voice and shakes the roof with an
insult discharged at the Majority.
Dr. Lueger. 'The Honourless Party would better keep still here!'
Gregorig (the echo, swelling out his shirt-front). 'Yes, keep quiet,
pimp!'
During the final hour of the sitting many happy phrases were distributed
through the proceedings. Among them were these--and they are strikingly
good ones:
'Blatherskite!'
'Blackguard!'
'Scoundrel!'
'Brothel-daddy!'
This last was the contribution of Dr. Gessman, and gave great
satisfaction. And deservedly. It seems to me that it was one of the
most sparkling things that was said during the whole evening.
At half-past two in the morning the House adjourned. The victory was
with the Opposition. No; not quite that. The effective part of it was
snatched away from them by an unlawful exercise of Presidential force
--another contribution toward driving the mistreated Minority out of their
minds.
You must try to imagine what it was. If I should offer it even in the
original it would probably not get by the editor's blue pencil; to offer
a translation would be to waste my ink, of course. This remark was
frankly printed in its entirety by one of the Vienna dailies, but the
others disguised the toughest half of it with stars.
If the reader will go back over this chapter and gather its array of
extraordinary epithets into a bunch and examine them, he will marvel at
two things: how this convention of gentlemen could consent to use such
gross terms; and why the users were allowed to get out the place alive.
There is no way to understand this strange situation. If every man in
the House were a professional blackguard, and had his home in a sailor
boarding-house, one could still not understand it; for, although that
sort do use such terms, they never take them. These men are not
professional blackguards; they are mainly gentlemen, and educated; yet
they use the terms, and take them too. They really seem to attach no
consequence to them. One cannot say that they act like schoolboys; for
that is only almost true, not entirely. Schoolboys blackguard each other
fiercely, and by the hour, and one would think that nothing would ever
come of it but noise; but that would be a mistake. Up to a certain limit
the result would be noise only, but, that limit overstepped, trouble
would follow right away. There are certain phrases--phrases of a
peculiar character--phrases of the nature of that reference to
Schonerer's grandmother, for instance--which not even the most spiritless
schoolboy in the English-speaking world would allow to pass unavenged.
One difference between schoolboys and the law-makers of the Reichsrath
seems to be that the law-makers have no limit, no danger-line.
Apparently they may call each other what they please, and go home
unmutilated.
Now, in fact, they did have a scuffle on two occasions, but it was not on
account of names called. There has been no scuffle where that was the
cause.
During the whole of November things went from bad to worse. The
all-important Ausgleich remained hard aground, and could not be sparred
off. Badeni's government could not withdraw the Language Ordinance and
keep its majority, and the Opposition could not be placated on easier
terms. One night, while the customary pandemonium was crashing and
thundering along at its best, a fight broke out. It was a surging,
struggling, shoulder-to-shoulder scramble. A great many blows were
struck. Twice Schonerer lifted one of the heavy ministerial fauteuils
--some say with one hand--and threatened members of the Majority with it,
but it was wrenched away from him; a member hammered Wolf over the head
with the President's bell, and another member choked him; a professor was
flung down and belaboured with fists and choked; he held up an open
penknife as a defence against the blows; it was snatched from him and
flung to a distance; it hit a peaceful Christian Socialist who wasn't
doing anything, and brought blood from his hand. This was the only blood
drawn. The men who got hammered and choked looked sound and well next
day. The fists and the bell were not properly handled, or better results
would have been apparent. I am quite sure that the fighters were not in
earnest.
I think that Saltpeter never uttered a truer thing than when he said,
'Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.' Evidently the
government's mind was tottering when this bald insults to the House was
the best way it could contrive for getting out of the frying-pan.
The episode would have been funny if the matter at stake had been a
trifle; but in the circumstances it was pathetic. The usual storm was
raging in the House. As usual, many of the Majority and the most of the
Minority were standing up--to have a better chance to exchange epithets
and make other noises. Into this storm Count Falkenhayn entered, with
his paper in his hand; and at once there was a rush to get near him and
hear him read his motion. In a moment he was walled in by listeners.
The several clauses of his motion were loudly applauded by these allies,
and as loudly disapplauded--if I may invent a word--by such of the
Opposition as could hear his voice. When he took his seat the President
promptly put the motion--persons desiring to vote in the affirmative,
stand up! The House was already standing up; had been standing for an
hour; and before a third of it had found out what the President had been
saying, he had proclaimed the adoption of the motion! And only a few
heard that. In fact, when that House is legislating you can't tell it
from artillery practice.
You will realise what a happy idea it was to side-track the lawful ayes
and noes and substitute a stand-up vote by this fact: that a little
later, when a deputation of deputies waited upon the President and asked
him if he was actually willing to claim that that measure had been
passed, he answered, 'Yes--and unanimously.' It shows that in effect the
whole House was on its feet when that trick was sprung.
The 'Lex Falkenhayn,' thus strangely born, gave the President power to
suspend for three days any deputy who should continue to be disorderly
after being called to order twice, and it also placed at his disposal
such force as might be necessary to make the suspension effective. So
the House had a sergeant-at-arms at last, and a more formidable one, as
to power, than any other legislature in Christendom had ever possessed.
The Lex Falkenhayn also gave the House itself authority to suspend
members for thirty days.
Certainly the thing looked well. The government was out of the
frying-pan at last. It congratulated itself, and was almost girlishly
happy. Its stock rose suddenly from less than nothing to a premium. It
confessed to itself, with pride, that its Lex Falkenhayn was a
master-stroke--a work of genius.
However, there were doubters--men who were troubled, and believed that a
grave mistake had been made. It might be that the Opposition was
crushed, and profitably for the country, too; but the manner of it--the
manner of it! That was the serious part. It could have far-reaching
results; results whose gravity might transcend all guessing. It might be
the initial step toward a return to government by force, a restoration of
the irresponsible methods of obsolete times.
At noon the House was empty--for I do not count myself. Half an hour
later the two galleries were solidly packed, the floor still empty.
Another half-hour later Wolf entered and passed to his place; then other
deputies began to stream in, among them many forms and faces grown
familiar of late. By one o'clock the membership was present in full
force. A band of Socialists stood grouped against the ministerial desks,
in the shadow of the Presidential tribune. It was observable that these
official strongholds were now protected against rushes by bolted gates,
and that these were in ward of servants wearing the House's livery. Also
the removable desk-boards had been taken away, and nothing left for
disorderly members to slat with.
There was a pervading, anxious hush--at least what stood very well for a
hush in that House. It was believed by many that the Opposition was
cowed, and that there would be no more obstruction, no more noise. That
was an error.
Not yet. That distant door opens again. And now we see what history
will be talking of five centuries hence: a uniformed and helmeted
battalion of bronzed and stalwart men marching in double file down the
floor of the House--a free parliament profaned by an invasion of brute
force!
Some of the results of this wild freak followed instantly. The Badeni
government came down with a crash; there was a popular outbreak or two in
Vienna; there were three or four days of furious rioting in Prague,
followed by the establishing there of martial law; the Jews and Germans
were harried and plundered, and their houses destroyed; in other Bohemian
towns there was rioting--in some cases the Germans being the rioters, in
others the Czechs--and in all cases the Jew had to roast, no matter which
side he was on. We are well along in December now;[3] the next new
Minister-President has not been able to patch up a peace among the
warring factions of the parliament, therefore there is no use in calling
it together again for the present; public opinion believes that
parliamentary government and the Constitution are actually threatened
with extinction, and that the permanency of the monarchy itself is a not
absolutely certain thing!
Yes, the Lex Falkenhayn was a great invention, and did what was claimed
for it--it got the government out of the frying-pan.
[2] 'In that gracious bygone time when a mild and good-tempered spirit
was the atmosphere of our House, when the manner of our speakers was
studiously formal and academic, and the storms and explosions of to-day
were wholly unknown,' etc.--Translation of the opening remark of a
leading article in this morning's 'Neue Freie Presse,' December 11.
Five or six years ago a lady from Finland asked me to tell her a story in
our Negro dialect, so that she could get an idea of what that variety of
speech was like. I told her one of Hopkinson Smith's Negro stories, and
gave her a copy of 'Harper's Monthly' containing it. She translated it
for a Swedish newspaper, but by an oversight named me as the author of it
instead of Smith. I was very sorry for that, because I got a good
lashing in the Swedish press, which would have fallen to his share but
for that mistake; for it was shown that Boccaccio had told that very
story, in his curt and meagre fashion, five hundred years before Smith
took hold of it and made a good and tellable thing out of it.
I have always been sorry for Smith. But my own turn has come now. A few
weeks ago Professor Van Dyke, of Princeton, asked this question:
'Do you know how old your "Jumping Frog" story is?'
And I answered:
But the professor was not chaffing: he was in earnest, and could not
abate a century. He offered to get the book and send it to me and the
Cambridge text-book containing the English translation also. I thought I
would like the translation best, because Greek makes me tired. January
30th he sent me the English version, and I will presently insert it in
this article. It is my 'Jumping Frog' tale in every essential. It is
not strung out as I have strung it out, but it is all there.
I heard the story told by a man who was not telling it to his hearers as
a thing new to them, but as a thing which they had witnessed and would
remember. He was a dull person, and ignorant; he had no gift as a
story-teller, and no invention; in his mouth this episode was merely
history--history and statistics; and the gravest sort of history, too;
he was entirely serious, for he was dealing with what to him were austere
facts, and they interested him solely because they were facts; he was
drawing on his memory, not his mind; he saw no humour in his tale,
neither did his listeners; neither he nor they ever smiled or laughed; in
my time I have not attended a more solemn conference. To him and to his
fellow gold-miners there were just two things in the story that were
worth considering. One was the smartness of its hero, Jim Smiley, in
taking the stranger in with a loaded frog; and the other was Smiley's
deep knowledge of a frog's nature--for he knew (as the narrator asserted
and the listeners conceded) that a frog likes shot and is already ready
to eat it. Those men discussed those two points, and those only. They
were hearty in their admiration of them, and none of the party was aware
that a first-rate story had been told in a first-rate way, and that it
brimful of a quality whose presence they never suspected--humour.
Now, then, the interesting question is, did the frog episode happen in
Angel's Camp in the spring of '49, as told in my hearing that day in the
fall of 1865? I am perfectly sure that it did. I am also sure that its
duplicate happened in Boeotia a couple of thousand years ago. I think it
must be a case of history actually repeating itself, and not a case of a
good story floating down the ages and surviving because too good to be
allowed to perish.
I would now like to have the reader examine the Greek story and the story
told by the dull and solemn Californian, and observe how exactly alike
they are in essentials.
[Translation.]
An Athenian once fell in with a Boeotian who was sitting by the road-side
looking at a frog. Seeing the other approach, the Boeotian said his was
a remarkable frog, and asked if he would agree to start a contest of
frogs, on condition that he whose frog jumped farthest should receive a
large sum of money. The Athenian replied that he would if the other
would fetch him a frog, for the lake was near. To this he agreed, and
when he was gone the Athenian took the frog, and, opening its mouth,
poured some stones into its stomach, so that it did not indeed seem
larger than before, but could not jump. The Boeotian soon returned with
the other frog, and the contest began. The second frog first was
pinched, and jumped moderately; then they pinched the Boeotian frog. And
he gathered himself for a leap, and used the utmost effort, but he could
not move his body the least. So the Athenian departed with the money.
When he was gone the Boeotian, wondering what was the matter with the
frog, lifted him up and examined him. And being turned upside down, he
opened his mouth and vomited out the stones.
Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-tarriers and chicken cocks, and tom-cats,
and all of them kind of things, till you couldn't rest, and you couldn't
fetch nothing for him to bet on but he'd match you. He ketched a frog
one day, and took him home, and said he cal'lated to educate him; and so
he never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn
that frog to jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too. He'd give him
a little punch behind, and the next minute you'd see that frog whirling
in the air like a doughnut--see him turn one summerset, or maybe a couple
if he got a good start, and come down flat-footed and all right, like a
cat. He got him up so in the matter of ketching flies, and kep'him in
practice so constant, that he'd nail a fly every time as fur as he could
see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do
'most anything--and I believe him. Why, I've seen him set Dan'l Webster
down here on this flor--Dan'l Webster was the name of the frog--and sing
out, 'Flies, Dan'l, flies!' and quicker'n you could wink he'd spring
straight up and snake a fly off'n the counter there, and flop down on the
floor ag'in as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of
his head with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn't no idea he'd
been doin' any more'n any frog might do. You never see a frog so modest
and straightfor'ard as he was, for all he was so gifted. And when it
come to fair and square jumping on a dead level, he could get over more
ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see.
Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you understand; and when it
came to that, Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he had a red.
Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he might be, for fellers
that had travelled and been everywheres all said he laid over any frog
that ever they see.
Well, Smiley kep' the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to fetch
him down-town sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller--a stranger
in the camp, he was--come acrost him with his box, and says:
And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round
this way and that, and says, 'H'm--so 'tis. Well, what's he good for?'
'Well,' Smiley says, easy and careless, 'he's good enough for one thing,
I should judge--he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County.'
The feller took the box again and took another long, particular look, and
give it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate, 'Well,' he says, 'I
don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog.'
'Maybe you don't,' Smiley says. 'Maybe you understand frogs and maybe
you don't understand 'em; maybe you've had experience, and maybe you
ain't only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I've got my opinion, and I'll
resk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County.'
And the feller studies a minute, and then says, kinder sad like, 'Well,
I'm only a stranger here, and I ain't got no frog, but if I had a frog
I'd bet you.'
And then Smiley says: 'That's all right--that's all right; if you'll hold
my box a minute, I'll go and get you a frog.' And so the feller took the
box and put up his forty dollars along with Smiley's and set down to
wait.
So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to hisself, and then
he got the frog out and prized his mouth open and took a teaspoon and
filled him full of quail shot--filled him pretty near up to his chin--and
set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped around in
the mud for a long time, and finally he ketched a frog and fetched him in
and give him to this feller, and says:
'Now, if you're ready, set him alongside of Dan'l, with his fore-paws
just even with Dan'l's, and I'll give the word.' Then he says, 'One
--two--three--git!' and him and the feller touched up the frogs from
behind, and the new frog hopped off lively; but Dan'l give a heave, and
hysted up his shoulders--so--like a Frenchman, but it warn't no use--he
couldn't budge; he was planted as solid as a church, and he couldn't no
more stir than if he was anchored out. Smiley was a good deal surprised,
and he was disgusted, too, but he didn't have no idea what the matter
was, of course.
The feller took the money and started away; and when he was going out at
the door he sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulder--so--at Dan'l, and
says again, very deliberate: 'Well,' he says, 'I don't see no p'ints
about that frog that's any better'n any other frog.'
Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan'l a long
time, and at last he says, 'I do wonder what in the nation that frog
throw'd off for--I wonder if there ain't something the matter with him
--he 'pears to look mighty baggy, somehow.' And he ketched Dan'l by the
nape of the neck, and hefted him, and says, 'Why, blame my cats if he
don't weigh five pound!' and turned him upside down, and he belched out a
double handful of shot. And then he see how it was, and he was the
maddest man--he set the frog down and took out after that feeler, but he
never ketched him.
The resemblances are deliciously exact. There you have the wily Boeotain
and the wily Jim Smiley waiting--two thousand years apart--and waiting,
each equipped with his frog and 'laying' for the stranger. A contest is
proposed--for money. The Athenian would take a chance 'if the other
would fetch him a frog'; the Yankee says: 'I'm only a stranger here, and
I ain't got a frog; but if I had a frog I'd bet you.' The wily Boeotian
and the wily Californian, with that vast gulf of two thousand years
between, retire eagerly and go frogging in the marsh; the Athenian and
the Yankee remain behind and work a best advantage, the one with pebbles,
the other with shot. Presently the contest began. In the one case 'they
pinched the Boeotian frog'; in the other, 'him and the feller touched up
the frogs from behind.' The Boeotian frog 'gathered himself for a leap'
(you can just see him!), but 'could not move his body in the least'; the
Californian frog 'give a heave, but it warn't no use--he couldn't budge.'
In both the ancient and the modern cases the strangers departed with the
money. The Boeotian and the Californian wonder what is the matter with
their frogs; they lift them and examine; they turn them upside down and
out spills the informing ballast.
Yes, the resemblances are curiously exact. I used to tell the story of
the 'Jumping Frog' in San Francisco, and presently Artemus Ward came
along and wanted it to help fill out a little book which he was about to
publish; so I wrote it out and sent it to his publisher, Carleton; but
Carleton thought the book had enough matter in it, so he gave the story
to Henry Clapp as a present, and Clapp put it in his 'Saturday Press,'
and it killed that paper with a suddenness that was beyond praise. At
least the paper died with that issue, and none but envious people have
ever tried to rob me of the honour and credit of killing it. The
'Jumping Frog' was the first piece of writing of mine that spread itself
through the newspapers and brought me into public notice. Consequently,
the 'Saturday Press' was a cocoon and I the worm in it; also, I was the
gay-coloured literary moth which its death set free. This simile has
been used before.
Early in '66 the 'Jumping Frog' was issued in book form, with other
sketches of mine. A year or two later Madame Blanc translated it into
French and published it in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes,' but the result
was not what should have been expected, for the 'Revue' struggled along
and pulled through, and is alive yet. I think the fault must have been
in the translation. I ought to have translated it myself. I think so
because I examined into the matter and finally retranslated the sketch
from the French back into English, to see what the trouble was; that is,
to see just what sort of a focus the French people got upon it. Then the
mystery was explained. In French the story is too confused and chaotic
and unreposeful and ungrammatical and insane; consequently it could only
cause grief and sickness--it could not kill. A glance at my
retranslation will show the reader that this must be true.
[My Retranslation.]
Eh bien! this Smiley nourished some terriers a rats, and some cocks of
combat, and some cats, and all sorts of things: and with his rage of
betting one no had more of repose. He trapped one day a frog and him
imported with him (et l'emporta chez lui) saying that he pretended to
make his education. You me believe if you will, but during three months
he not has nothing done but to him apprehend to jump (apprendre a sauter)
in a court retired of her mansion (de sa maison). And I you respond that
he have succeeded. He him gives a small blow by behind, and the instant
after you shall see the frog turn in the air like a grease-biscuit, make
one summersault, sometimes two, when she was well started, and refall
upon his feet like a cat. He him had accomplished in the art of to
gobble the flies (gober des mouches), and him there exercised
continually--so well that a fly at the most far that she appeared was a
fly lost. Smiley had custom to say that all which lacked to a frog it
was the education, but with the education she could do nearly all--and I
him believe. Tenez, I him have seen pose Daniel Webster there upon this
plank--Daniel Webster was the name of the frog--and to him sing, 'Some
flies, Daniel, some flies!'--in a fash of the eye Daniel had bounded and
seized a fly here upon the counter, then jumped anew at the earth, where
he rested truly to himself scratch the head with his behind-foot, as if
he no had not the least idea of his superiority. Never you not have seen
frog as modest, as natural, sweet as she was. And when he himself
agitated to jump purely and simply upon plain earth, she does more ground
in one jump than any beast of his species than you can know.
To jump plain--this was his strong. When he himself agitated for that
Smiley multiplied the bests upon her as long as there to him remained a
red. It must to know, Smiley was monstrously proud of his frog, and he
of it was right, for some men who were travelled, who had all seen, said
that they to him would be injurious to him compare to another frog.
Smiley guarded Daniel in a little box latticed which he carried bytimes
to the village for some bet.
One day an individual stranger at the camp him arrested with his box and
him said:
The individual it took, it regarded with care, it turned from one side
and from the other, then he said:
'My God!' responded Smiley, always with an air disengaged, 'she is good
for one thing, to my notice (a mon avis), she can better in jumping (elle
peut batter en sautant) all frogs of the county of Calaveras.'
The individual retook the box, it examined of new longly, and it rendered
to Smiley in saying with an air deliberate:
'Eh bien! I no saw not that that frog had nothing of better than each
frog.' (Je ne vois pas que cette grenouille ait rien de mieux qu'aucune
grenouille.) [If that isn't grammar gone to seed, then I count myself no
judge.--M.T.]
'Possible that you not it saw not,' said Smiley; 'possible that you--you
comprehend frogs; possible that you not you there comprehend nothing;
possible that you had of the experience, and possible that you not be but
an amateur. Of all manner (de toute maniere) I bet forty dollars that
she batter in jumping no matter which frog of the country of Calaveras.'
'I not am but a stranger here, I no have not a frog; but if I of it had
one, I would embrace the bet.'
Behold, then, the individual who guards the box, who puts his forty
dollars upon those of Smiley, and who attends (et qui attendre). He
attended enough longtimes, reflecting all solely. And figure you that he
takes Daniel, him opens the mouth by force and with a teaspoon him fills
with shot of the hunt, even him fills just to the chin, then he him puts
by the earth. Smiley during these times was at slopping in a swamp.
Finally he trapped (attrape) a frog, him carried to that individual, and
said:
'Now if you be ready, put him all against Daniel, with their before-feet
upon the same line, and I give the signal'--then he added: 'One, two
three--advance!'
Him and the individual touched their frogs by behind, and the frog new
put to jump smartly, but Daniel himself lifted ponderously, exhalted the
shoulders thus, like a Frenchman--to what good? He could not budge, he
is planted solid like a church, he not advance no more than if one him
had put at the anchor.
Smiley was surprised and disgusted, but he not himself doubted not of the
turn being intended (mais il ne se doutait pas du tour bien entendre).
The indidivual empocketed the silver, himself with it went, and of it
himself in going is that he no gives not a jerk of thumb over the
shoulder--like that--at the poor Daniel, in saying with his air
deliberate--(L'individu empoche l'argent, s'en va et en s'en allant
est-ce qu'il ne donne pas un coup de pouce pas-dessus l'epaule, comme ca,
au pauvre Daniel, en disant de son air delibere).
'Eh bien! I no see not that that frog has nothing of better than
another.'
Smiley himself scratched longtimes the head, the eyes fixed upon Daniel,
until that which at last he said:
'I me demand how the devil it makes itself that this beast has refused.
Is it that she had something? One would believe that she is stuffed.'
He grasped Daniel by the skin of the neck, him lifted and said:
He him reversed and the unhappy belched two handfuls of shot (et le
malheureux, etc.). When Smiley recognised how it was, he was like mad.
He deposited his frog by the earth and ran after that individual, but he
not him caught never.
It may be that there are people who can translate better than I can, but
I am not acquainted with them.
So ends the private and public history of the Jumping Frog of Calaveras
County, an incident which has this unique feature about it--that it is
both old and new, a 'chestnut' and not a 'chestnut;' for it was original
when it happened two thousand years ago, and was again original when it
happened in California in our own time.
P.S.
'Why?'
'Do you mean to intimate that the tale is modern, and not borrowed from
some ancient Greek book.'
'Yes. It is not permissible for any but the very young and innocent to
be so easily beguiled as you and Van Dyke have been.'
'Do you mean that we have fallen a prey to our ignorance and simplicity?'
'Then he knew where to find the ancient Greek version if one existed.
Why didn't he look? Why did he jump to conclusions?'
As it turns out, now, it was not claimed that the story had been
translated from the Greek. It had its place among other uncredited
stories, and was there to be turned into Greek by students of that
language. 'Greek Prose Composition'--that title is what made the
confusion. It seemed to mean that the originals were Greek. It was not
well chosen, for it was pretty sure to mislead.
Thus vanishes the Greek Frog, and I am sorry: for he loomed fine and
grand across the sweep of the ages, and I took a great pride in him.
M.T.
MY MILITARY CAMPAIGN
You have heard from a great many people who did something in the war; is
it not fair and right that you listen a little moment to one who started
out to do something in it, but didn't? Thousands entered the war, got
just a taste of it, and then stepped out again, permanently. These, by
their very numbers, are respectable, and are therefore entitled to a sort
of voice--not a loud one, but a modest one; not a boastful one, but an
apologetic one. They ought not to be allowed much space among better
people--people who did something--I grant that; but they ought at least
to be allowed to state why they didn't do anything, and also to explain
the process by which they didn't do anything. Surely this kind of light
must have a sort of value.
Out West there was a good deal of confusion in men's minds during the
first months of the great trouble--a good deal of unsettledness, of
leaning first this way, then that, then the other way. It was hard for
us to get our bearings. I call to mind an instance of this. I was
piloting on the Mississippi when the news came that South Carolina had
gone out of the Union on December 20, 1860. My pilot-mate was a New
Yorker. He was strong for the Union; so was I. But he would not listen
to me with any patience; my loyalty was smirched, to his eye, because my
father had owned slaves. I said, in palliation of this dark fact, that I
had heard my father say, some years before he died, that slavery was a
great wrong, and that he would free the solitary Negro he then owned if
he could think it right to give away the property of the family when he
was so straitened in means. My mate retorted that a mere impulse was
nothing--anybody could pretend to a good impulse; and went on decrying my
Unionism and libelling my ancestry. A month later the secession
atmosphere had considerably thickened on the Lower Mississippi, and I
became a rebel; so did he. We were together in New Orleans, January 26,
when Louisiana went out of the Union. He did his full share of the rebel
shouting, but was bitterly opposed to letting me do mine. He said that I
came of bad stock--of a father who had been willing to set slaves free.
In the following summer he was piloting a Federal gun-boat and shouting
for the Union again, and I was in the Confederate army. I held his note
for some borrowed money. He was one of the most upright men I ever knew;
but he repudiated that note without hesitation, because I was a rebel,
and the son of a man who had owned slaves.
In that summer--of 1861--the first wash of the wave of war broke upon the
shores of Missouri. Our State was invaded by the Union forces. They
took possession of St. Louis, Jefferson Barracks, and some other points.
The Governor, Claib Jackson, issued his proclamation calling out fifty
thousand militia to repel the invader.
I was visiting in the small town where my boyhood had been spent
--Hannibal, Marion County. Several of us got together in a secret place by
night and formed ourselves into a military company. One Tom Lyman, a
young fellow of a good deal of spirit but of no military experience, was
made captain; I was made second lieutenant. We had no first lieutenant;
I do not know why; it was long ago. There were fifteen of us. By the
advice of an innocent connected with the organisation, we called
ourselves the Marion Rangers. I do not remember that any one found fault
with the name. I did not; I thought it sounded quite well. The young
fellow who proposed this title was perhaps a fair sample of the kind of
stuff we were made of. He was young, ignorant, good-natured,
well-meaning, trivial, full of romance, and given to reading chivalric
novels and singing forlorn love-ditties. He had some pathetic little
nickel-plated aristocratic instincts, and detested his name, which was
Dunlap; detested it, partly because it was nearly as common in that
region as Smith, but mainly because it had a plebeian sound to his ear.
So he tried to ennoble it by writing it in this way: d'Unlap. That
contented his eye, but left his ear unsatisfied, for people gave the new
name the same old pronunciation--emphasis on the front end of it. He
then did the bravest thing that can be imagined--a thing to make one
shiver when one remembers how the world is given to resenting shams and
affectations; he began to write his name so: d'Un Lap. And he waited
patiently through the long storm of mud that was flung at this work of
art, and he had his reward at last; for he lived to see that name
accepted, and the emphasis put where he wanted it, by people who had
known him all his life, and to whom the tribe of Dunlaps had been as
familiar as the rain and the sunshine for forty years. So sure of
victory at last is the courage that can wait. He said he had found, by
consulting some ancient French chronicles, that the name was rightly and
originally written d'Un Lap; and said that if it were translated into
English it would mean Peterson: Lap, Latin or Greek, he said, for stone
or rock, same as the French Pierre, that is to say, Peter; d', of or
from; un, a or one; hence d'Un Lap, of or from a stone or a Peter; that
is to say, one who is the son of a stone, the son of a Peter--Peterson.
Our militia company were not learned, and the explanation confused them;
so they called him Peterson Dunlap. He proved useful to us in his way;
he named our camps for us, and he generally struck a name that was 'no
slouch,' as the boys said.
That is one sample of us. Another was Ed Stevens, son of the town
jeweller,--trim-built, handsome, graceful, neat as a cat; bright,
educated, but given over entirely to fun. There was nothing serious in
life to him. As far as he was concerned, this military expedition of
ours was simply a holiday. I should say that about half of us looked
upon it in the same way; not consciously, perhaps, but unconsciously.
We did not think; we were not capable of it. As for myself, I was full
of unreasoning joy to be done with turning out of bed at midnight and
four in the morning, for a while; grateful to have a change, new scenes,
new occupations, a new interest. In my thoughts that was as far as I
went; I did not go into the details; as a rule one doesn't at
twenty-five.
Another sample was Smith, the blacksmith's apprentice. This vast donkey
had some pluck, of a slow and sluggish nature, but a soft heart; at one
time he would knock a horse down for some impropriety, and at another he
would get homesick and cry. However, he had one ultimate credit to his
account which some of us hadn't: he stuck to the war, and was killed in
battle at last.
These samples will answer--and they are quite fair ones. Well, this herd
of cattle started for the war. What could you expect of them? They did
as well as they knew how, but really what was justly to be expected of
them? Nothing, I should say. That is what they did.
We waited for a dark night, for caution and secrecy were necessary; then,
toward midnight, we stole in couples and from various directions to the
Griffith place, beyond the town; from that point we set out together on
foot. Hannibal lies at the extreme south-eastern corner of Marion
County, on the Mississippi River; our objective point was the hamlet of
New London, ten miles away, in Ralls County.
The first hour was all fun, all idle nonsense and laughter. But that
could not be kept up. The steady trudging came to be like work; the play
had somehow oozed out of it; the stillness of the woods and the
sombreness of the night began to throw a depressing influence over the
spirits of the boys, and presently the talking died out and each person
shut himself up in his own thoughts. During the last half of the second
hour nobody said a word.
Lyman urged, pleaded, tried to shame us, but it had no effect. Our
course was plain, our minds were made up: we would flank the farmhouse
--go out around. And that is what we did. We turned the position.
We struck into the woods and entered upon a rough time, stumbling over
roots, getting tangled in vines, and torn by briers. At last we reached
an open place in a safe region, and sat down, blown and hot, to cool off
and nurse our scratches and bruises. Lyman was annoyed, but the rest of
us were cheerful; we had flanked the farm-house, we had made our first
military movement, and it was a success; we had nothing to fret about, we
were feeling just the other way. Horse-play and laughing began again;
the expedition was become a holiday frolic once more.
Then we had two more hours of dull trudging and ultimate silence and
depression; then, about dawn, we straggled into New London, soiled,
heel-blistered, fagged with our little march, and all of us except
Stevens in a sour and raspy humour and privately down on the war. We
stacked our shabby old shot-guns in Colonel Ralls's barn, and then went
in a body and breakfasted with that veteran of the Mexican War.
Afterwards he took us to a distant meadow, and there in the shade of a
tree we listened to an old-fashioned speech from him, full of gunpowder
and glory, full of that adjective-piling, mixed metaphor, and windy
declamation which was regarded as eloquence in that ancient time and that
remote region; and then he swore us on the Bible to be faithful to the
State of Missouri and drive all invaders from her soil, no matter whence
they might come or under what flag they might march. This mixed us
considerably, and we could not make out just what service we were
embarked in; but Colonel Ralls, the practised politician and
phrase-juggler, was not similarly in doubt; he knew quite clearly that he
had invested us in the cause of the Southern Confederacy. He closed the
solemnities by belting around me the sword which his neighbour, colonel
Brown, had worn at Buena Vista and Molino del Rey; and he accompanied
this act with another impressive blast.
Then we formed in line of battle and marched four miles to a shady and
pleasant piece of woods on the border of the far-reached expanses of a
flowery prairie. It was an enchanting region for war--our kind of war.
We pierced the forest about half a mile, and took up a strong position,
with some low, rocky, and wooded hills behind us, and a purling, limpid
creek in front. Straightway half the command were in swimming, and the
other half fishing. The ass with the French name gave this position a
romantic title, but it was too long, so the boys shortened and simplified
it to Camp Ralls.
For a time, life was idly delicious, it was perfect; there was nothing to
mar it. Then came some farmers with an alarm one day. They said it was
rumoured that the enemy were advancing in our direction, from over Hyde's
prairie. The result was a sharp stir among us, and general
consternation. It was a rude awakening from our pleasant trance. The
rumour was but a rumour--nothing definite about it; so, in the confusion,
we did not know which way to retreat. Lyman was for not retreating at
all, in these uncertain circumstances; but he found that if he tried to
maintain that attitude he would fare badly, for the command were in no
humour to put up with insubordination. So he yielded the point and
called a council of war--to consist of himself and the three other
officers; but the privates made such a fuss about being left out, that we
had to allow them to remain, for they were already present, and doing the
most of the talking too. The question was, which way to retreat; but all
were so flurried that nobody seemed to have even a guess to offer.
Except Lyman. He explained in a few calm words, that inasmuch as the
enemy were approaching from over Hyde's prairie, our course was simple:
all we had to do was not to retreat toward him; any other direction would
answer our needs perfectly. Everybody saw in a moment how true this was,
and how wise; so Lyman got a great many compliments. It was now decided
that we should fall back upon Mason's farm.
It was after dark by this time, and as we could not know how soon the
enemy might arrive, it did not seem best to try to take the horses and
things with us; so we only took the guns and ammunition, and started at
once. The route was very rough and hilly and rocky, and presently the
night grew very black and rain began to fall; so we had a troublesome
time of it, struggling and stumbling along in the dark; and soon some
person slipped and fell, and then the next person behind stumbled over
him and fell, and so did the rest, one after the other; and then Bowers
came with the keg of powder in his arms, whilst the command were all
mixed together, arms and legs, on the muddy slope; and so he fell, of
course, with the keg, and this started the whole detachment down the hill
in a body, and they landed in the brook at the bottom in a pile, and each
that was undermost pulling the hair and scratching and biting those that
were on top of him; and those that were being scratched and bitten,
scratching and biting the rest in their turn, and all saying they would
die before they would ever go to war again if they ever got out of this
brook this time, and the invader might rot for all they cared, and the
country along with them--and all such talk as that, which was dismal to
hear and take part in, in such smothered, low voices, and such a grisly
dark place and so wet, and the enemy maybe coming any moment.
The keg of powder was lost, and the guns too; so the growling and
complaining continued straight along whilst the brigade pawed around the
pasty hillside and slopped around in the brook hunting for these things;
consequently we lost considerable time at this; and then we heard a
sound, and held our breath and listened, and it seemed to be the enemy
coming, though it could have been a cow, for it had a cough like a cow;
but we did not wait, but left a couple of guns behind and struck out for
Mason's again as briskly as we could scramble along in the dark. But we
got lost presently among the rugged little ravines, and wasted a deal of
time finding the way again, so it was after nine when we reached Mason's
stile at last; and then before we could open our mouths to give the
countersign, several dogs came bounding over the fence, with great riot
and noise, and each of them took a soldier by the slack of his trousers
and began to back away with him. We could not shoot the dogs without
endangering the persons they were attached to; so we had to look on,
helpless, at what was perhaps the most mortifying spectacle of the civil
war. There was light enough, and to spare, for the Masons had now run
out on the porch with candles in their hands. The old man and his son
came and undid the dogs without difficulty, all but Bowers's; but they
couldn't undo his dog, they didn't know his combination; he was of the
bull kind, and seemed to be set with a Yale time-lock; but they got him
loose at last with some scalding water, of which Bowers got his share and
returned thanks. Peterson Dunlap afterwards made up a fine name for this
engagement, and also for the night march which preceded it, but both have
long ago faded out of my memory.
We now went into the house, and they began to ask us a world of
questions, whereby it presently came out that we did not know anything
concerning who or what we were running from; so the old gentleman made
himself very frank, and said we were a curious breed of soldiers, and
guessed we could be depended on to end up the war in time, because no
Government could stand the expense of the shoe-leather we should cost it
trying to follow us around. 'Marion Rangers! good name, b'gosh!' said
he. And wanted to know why we hadn't had a picket-guard at the place
where the road entered the prairie, and why we hadn't sent out a scouting
party to spy out the enemy and bring us an account of his strength, and
so on, before jumping up and stampeding out of a strong position upon a
mere vague rumour--and so on, and so forth, till he made us all fell
shabbier than the dogs had done, and not half so enthusiastically
welcome. So we went to bed shamed and low-spirited; except Stevens.
Soon Stevens began to devise a garment for Bowers which could be made to
automatically display his battle-scars to the grateful, or conceal them
from the envious, according to his occasions; but Bowers was in no humour
for this, so there was a fight, and when it was over Stevens had some
battle-scars of his own to think about.
Then we got a little sleep. But after all we had gone through, our
activities were not over for the night; for about two o'clock in the
morning we heard a shout of warning from down the lane, accompanied by a
chorus from all the dogs, and in a moment everybody was up and flying
around to find out what the alarm was about. The alarmist was a horseman
who gave notice that a detachment of Union soldiers was on its way from
Hannibal with orders to capture and hang any bands like ours which it
could find, and said we had no time to lose. Farmer Mason was in a
flurry this time, himself. He hurried us out of the house with all
haste, and sent one of his negroes with us to show us where to hide
ourselves and our tell-tale guns among the ravines half a mile away. It
was raining heavily.
We struck down the lane, then across some rocky pasture-land which
offered good advantages for stumbling; consequently we were down in the
mud most of the time, and every time a man went down he blackguarded the
war, and the people who started it, and everybody connected with it, and
gave himself the master dose of all for being so foolish as to go into
it. At last we reached the wooded mouth of a ravine, and there we
huddled ourselves under the streaming trees, and sent the negro back
home. It was a dismal and heart-breaking time. We were like to be
drowned with the rain, deafened with the howling wind and the booming
thunder, and blinded by the lightning. It was indeed a wild night. The
drenching we were getting was misery enough, but a deeper misery still
was the reflection that the halter might end us before we were a day
older. A death of this shameful sort had not occurred to us as being
among the possibilities of war. It took the romance all out of the
campaign, and turned our dreams of glory into a repulsive nightmare. As
for doubting that so barbarous an order had been given, not one of us did
that.
The long night wore itself out at last, and then the negro came to us
with the news that the alarm had manifestly been a false one, and that
breakfast would soon be ready. Straightway we were light-hearted again,
and the world was bright, and life as full of hope and promise as ever
--for we were young then. How long ago that was! Twenty-four years.
The mongrel child of philology named the night's refuse Camp Devastation,
and no soul objected. The Masons gave us a Missouri country breakfast,
in Missourian abundance, and we needed it: hot biscuits; hot 'wheat
bread' prettily criss-crossed in a lattice pattern on top; hot corn pone;
fried chicken; bacon, coffee, eggs, milk, buttermilk, etc.;--and the
world may be confidently challenged to furnish the equal to such a
breakfast, as it is cooked in the South.
We stayed several days at Mason's; and after all these years the memory
of the dullness, the stillness and lifelessness of that slumberous
farm-house still oppresses my spirit as with a sense of the presence of
death and mourning. There was nothing to do, nothing to think about;
there was no interest in life. The male part of the household were away
in the fields all day, the women were busy and out of our sight; there
was no sound but the plaintive wailing of a spinning-wheel, forever
moaning out from some distant room--the most lonesome sound in nature, a
sound steeped and sodden with homesickness and the emptiness of life.
The family went to bed about dark every night, and as we were not invited
to intrude any new customs, we naturally followed theirs. Those nights
were a hundred years long to youths accustomed to being up till twelve.
We lay awake and miserable till that hour every time, and grew old and
decrepit waiting through the still eternities for the clock-strikes. This
was no place for town boys. So at last it was with something very like
joy that we received news that the enemy were on our track again. With a
new birth of the old warrior spirit, we sprang to our places in line of
battle and fell back on Camp Ralls.
Captain Lyman had taken a hint from Mason's talk, and he now gave ordered
that our camp should be guarded against surprise by the posting of
pickets. I was ordered to place a picket at the forks of the road in
Hyde's prairie. Night shut down black and threatening. I told Sergeant
Bowers to go out to that place and stay till midnight; and, just as I was
expecting, he said he wouldn't do it. I tried to get others to go, but
all refused. Some excused themselves on account of the weather; but the
rest were frank enough to say they wouldn't go in any kind of weather.
This kind of thing sounds odd now, and impossible, but it seemed a
perfectly natural thing to do. There were scores of little camps
scattered over Missouri where the same thing was happening. These camps
were composed of young men who had been born and reared to a sturdy
independence, and who did not know what it meant to be ordered around by
Tom, Dick, and Harry, whom they had known familiarly all their lives, in
the village or on the farm. It is quite within the probabilities that
this same thing was happening all over the South. James Redpath
recognised the justice of this assumption, and furnished the following
instance in support of it. During a short stay in East Tennessee he was
in a citizen colonel's tent one day, talking, when a big private appeared
at the door, and without salute or other circumlocution said to the
colonel:
'What for?'
'Well, I hain't b'en there for a right smart while, and I'd like to see
how things is comin' on.'
'Well don't be gone longer than that; and get back sooner if you can.'
That was all, and the citizen officer resumed his conversation where the
private had broken it off. This was in the first months of the war, of
course. The camps in our part of Missouri were under Brigadier-General
Thomas H. Harris. He was a townsman of ours, a first-rate fellow, and
well liked; but we had all familiarly known him as the sole and
modest-salaried operator in our telegraph office, where he had to send
about one dispatch a week in ordinary times, and two when there was a
rush of business; consequently, when he appeared in our midst one day, on
the wing, and delivered a military command of some sort, in a large
military fashion, nobody was surprised at the response which he got from
the assembled soldiery:
It was quite the natural thing. One might justly imagine that we were
hopeless material for war. And so we seemed, in our ignorant state; but
there were those among us who afterward learned the grim trade; learned
to obey like machines; became valuable soldiers; fought all through the
war, and came out at the end with excellent records. One of the very
boys who refused to go out on picket duty that night, and called me an
ass for thinking he would expose himself to danger in such a foolhardy
way, had become distinguished for intrepidity before he was a year older.
In that camp the whole command slept on the corn in the big corn-crib;
and there was usually a general row before morning, for the place was
full of rats, and they would scramble over the boys' bodies and faces,
annoying and irritating everybody; and now and then they would bite some
one's toe, and the person who owned the toe would start up and magnify
his English and begin to throw corn in the dark. The ears were half as
heavy as bricks, and when they struck they hurt. The persons struck
would respond, and inside of five minutes every man would be locked in a
death-grip with his neighbour. There was a grievous deal of blood shed
in the corn-crib, but this was all that was spilt while I was in the war.
No, that is not quite true. But for one circumstance it would have been
all. I will come to that now.
Our scares were frequent. Every few days rumours would come that the
enemy were approaching. In these cases we always fell back on some other
camp of ours; we never stayed where we were. But the rumours always
turned out to be false; so at last even we began to grow indifferent to
them. One night a negro was sent to our corn-crib with the same old
warning: the enemy was hovering in our neighbourhood. We all said let
him hover. We resolved to stay still and be comfortable. It was a fine
warlike resolution, and no doubt we all felt the stir of it in our veins
--for a moment. We had been having a very jolly time, that was full of
horse-play and school-boy hilarity; but that cooled down now, and
presently the fast-waning fire of forced jokes and forced laughs died out
altogether, and the company became silent. Silent and nervous. And soon
uneasy--worried--apprehensive. We had said we would stay, and we were
committed. We could have been persuaded to go, but there was nobody
brave enough to suggest it. An almost noiseless movement presently began
in the dark, by a general and unvoiced impulse. When the movement was
completed, each man knew that he was not the only person who had crept to
the front wall and had his eye at a crack between the logs. No, we were
all there; all there with our hearts in our throats, and staring out
toward the sugar-troughs where the forest foot-path came through. It was
late, and there was a deep woodsy stillness everywhere. There was a
veiled moonlight, which was only just strong enough to enable us to mark
the general shape of objects. Presently a muffled sound caught our ears,
and we recognised it as the hoof-beats of a horse or horses. And right
away a figure appeared in the forest path; it could have been made of
smoke, its mass had so little sharpness of outline. It was a man on
horseback; and it seemed to me that there were others behind him. I got
hold of a gun in the dark, and pushed it through a crack between the
logs, hardly knowing what I was doing, I was so dazed with fright.
Somebody said 'Fire!' I pulled the trigger. I seemed to see a hundred
flashes and hear a hundred reports, then I saw the man fall down out of
the saddle. My first feeling was of surprised gratification; my first
impulse was an apprentice-sportsman's impulse to run and pick up his
game. Somebody said, hardly audibly, 'Good--we've got him!--wait for the
rest.' But the rest did not come. There was not a sound, not the
whisper of a leaf; just perfect stillness; an uncanny kind of stillness,
which was all the more uncanny on account of the damp, earthy, late-night
smells now rising and pervading it. Then, wondering, we crept stealthily
out, and approached the man. When we got to him the moon revealed him
distinctly. He was lying on his back, with his arms abroad; his mouth
was open and his chest heaving with long gasps, and his white shirt-front
was all splashed with blood. The thought shot through me that I was a
murderer; that I had killed a man--a man who had never done me any harm.
That was the coldest sensation that ever went through my marrow. I was
down by him in a moment, helplessly stroking his forehead; and I would
have given anything then--my own life freely--to make him again what he
had been five minutes before. And all the boys seemed to be feeling in
the same way; they hung over him, full of pitying interest, and tried all
they could to help him, and said all sorts of regretful things. They had
forgotten all about the enemy; they thought only of this one forlorn unit
of the foe. Once my imagination persuaded me that the dying man gave me
a reproachful look out of his shadowy eyes, and it seemed to me that I
would rather he had stabbed me than done that. He muttered and mumbled
like a dreamer in his sleep, about his wife and child; and I thought with
a new despair, 'This thing that I have done does not end with him; it
falls upon them too, and they never did me any harm, any more than he.'
In a little while the man was dead. He was killed in war; killed in fair
and legitimate war; killed in battle, as you might say; and yet he was as
sincerely mourned by the opposing force as if he had been their brother.
The boys stood there a half hour sorrowing over him, and recalling the
details of the tragedy, and wondering who he might be, and if he were a
spy, and saying that if it were to do over again they would not hurt him
unless he attacked them first. It soon came out that mine was not the
only shot fired; there were five others--a division of the guilt which
was a grateful relief to me, since it in some degree lightened and
diminished the burden I was carrying. There were six shots fired at
once; but I was not in my right mind at the time, and my heated
imagination had magnified my one shot into a volley.
The man was not in uniform, and was not armed. He was a stranger in the
country; that was all we ever found out about him. The thought of him
got to preying upon me every night; I could not get rid of it. I could
not drive it away, the taking of that unoffending life seemed such a
wanton thing. And it seemed an epitome of war; that all war must be just
that--the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal
animosity; strangers whom, in other circumstances, you would help if you
found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it. My
campaign was spoiled. It seemed to me that I was not rightly equipped
for this awful business; that war was intended for men, and I for a
child's nurse. I resolved to retire from this avocation of sham
soldiership while I could save some remnant of my self-respect. These
morbid thoughts clung to me against reason; for at bottom I did not
believe I had touched that man. The law of probabilities decreed me
guiltless of his blood; for in all my small experience with guns I had
never hit anything I had tried to hit, and I knew I had done my best to
hit him. Yet there was no solace in the thought. Against a diseased
imagination, demonstration goes for nothing.
The rest of my war experience was of a piece with what I have already
told of it. We kept monotonously falling back upon one camp or another,
and eating up the country--I marvel now at the patience of the farmers
and their families. They ought to have shot us; on the contrary, they
were as hospitably kind and courteous to us as if we had deserved it.
In one of these camps we found Ab Grimes, an Upper Mississippi pilot, who
afterwards became famous as a dare-devil rebel spy, whose career bristled
with desperate adventures. The look and style of his comrades suggested
that they had not come into the war to play, and their deeds made good
the conjecture later. They were fine horsemen and good revolver-shots;
but their favourite arm was the lasso. Each had one at his pommel, and
could snatch a man out of the saddle with it every time, on a full
gallop, at any reasonable distance.
In another camp the chief was a fierce and profane old blacksmith of
sixty, and he had furnished his twenty recruits with gigantic home-made
bowie-knives, to be swung with the two hands, like the machetes of the
Isthmus. It was a grisly spectacle to see that earnest band practising
their murderous cuts and slashes under the eye of that remorseless old
fanatic.
The last camp which we fell back upon was in a hollow near the village of
Florida, where I was born--in Monroe County. Here we were warned, one
day, that a Union colonel was sweeping down on us with a whole regiment
at his heels. This looked decidedly serious. Our boys went apart and
consulted; then we went back and told the other companies present that
the war was a disappointment to us and we were going to disband. They
were getting ready, themselves, to fall back on some place or other, and
were only waiting for General Tom Harris, who was expected to arrive at
any moment; so they tried to persuade us to wait a little while, but the
majority of us said no, we were accustomed to falling back, and didn't
need any of Tom Harris's help; we could get along perfectly well without
him and save time too. So about half of our fifteen, including myself,
mounted and left on the instant; the others yielded to persuasion and
stayed--stayed through the war.
An hour later we met General Harris on the road, with two or three people
in his company--his staff, probably, but we could not tell; none of them
was in uniform; uniforms had not come into vogue among us yet. Harris
ordered us back; but we told him there was a Union colonel coming with a
whole regiment in his wake, and it looked as if there was going to be a
disturbance; so we had concluded to go home. He raged a little, but it
was of no use; our minds were made up. We had done our share; had killed
one man, exterminated one army, such as it was; let him go and kill the
rest, and that would end the war. I did not see that brisk young general
again until last year; then he was wearing white hair and whiskers.
In time I came to know that Union colonel whose coming frightened me out
of the war and crippled the Southern cause to that extent--General Grant.
I came within a few hours of seeing him when he was as unknown as I was
myself; at a time when anybody could have said, 'Grant?--Ulysses S.
Grant? I do not remember hearing the name before.' It seems difficult
to realise that there was once a time when such a remark could be
rationally made; but there was, and I was within a few miles of the place
and the occasion too, though proceeding in the other direction.
The thoughtful will not throw this war-paper of mine lightly aside as
being valueless. It has this value: it is a not unfair picture of what
went on in many and many a militia camp in the first months of the
rebellion, when the green recruits were without discipline, without the
steadying and heartening influence or trained leaders; when all their
circumstances were new and strange, and charged with exaggerated terrors,
and before the invaluable experience of actual collision in the field had
turned them from rabbits into soldiers. If this side of the picture of
that early day has not before been put into history, then history has
been to that degree incomplete, for it had and has its rightful place
there. There was more Bull Run material scattered through the early
camps of this country than exhibited itself at Bull Run. And yet it
learned its trade presently, and helped to fight the great battles later.
I could have become a soldier myself, if I had waited. I had got part of
it learned; I knew more about retreating than the man that invented
retreating.
[1] It was always my impression that that was what the horse was there
for, and I know that it was also the impression of at least one other of
the command, for we talked about it at the time, and admired the military
ingenuity of the device; but when I was out West three years ago I was
told by Mr. A. G. Fuqua, a member of our company, that the horse was his,
that the leaving him tied at the door was a matter of mere forgetfulness,
and that to attribute it to intelligent invention was to give him quite
too much credit. In support of his position, he called my attention to
the suggestive fact that the artifice was not employed again. I had not
thought of that before.
MEISTERSCHAFT
DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
ACT I. SCENE I.
[Turns her back, buries herself in her pamphlet, first memorising aloud,
until Annie enters, then to herself, rocking to and fro, and rapidly
moving her lips, without uttering a sound.]
ANNIE. (Memorising: Er liess mich gestern fruh rufen, und sagte mir dass
er einen sehr unangenehmen Brief von Ihrem Lehrer erhalten hatte.
Repeats twice aloud, then to herself, briskly moving her lips.)
M. (Still not seeing her sister.) Wie geht es Ihrem Herrn Schwiegervater?
Es freut mich sehr dass Ihre Frau Mutter wieder wohl ist. (Repeats.
Then mouths in silence.)
A. (Repeats her sentence a couple of times aloud; then looks up, working
her lips, and discovers Margaret.) Oh, you here? (Running to her.) O
lovey-dovey, dovey-lovey, I've got the gr-reatest news! Guess, guess,
guess! You'll never guess in a hundred thousand million years--and more!
A. As sure as guns!
M. (Joining in the dance.) Oh, it's just too lovely for anything!
(Unconsciously memorising:) Es ware mir lieb wenn Sie morgen mit mir in
die Kirche gehen konnten, aber ich kann selbst nicht gehen, weil ich
Sonntags gewohnlich krank bin. Juckhe!
M. Isn't--that--too lovely!
M. Got to what?
A. Speak German.
M. (Joyously.) Oh, what an elegant idea! You certainly have got a mind
that's a mine of resources, if ever anybody had one.
M. (With a happy idea.) Why Annie, it's the greatest thing in the world.
I've been all this time struggling and despairing over these few little
Meisterschaft primers: but as sure as you live, I'll have the whole
fifteen by heart before this time day after to-morrow. See if I don't.
A. Stoss an!
A. --he!
A. No.
M. No? Why not? When are they coming? What are they waiting for? The
idea! I never heard of such a thing! What do you--
A. (Breaking in.) Wait, wait, wait! give a body a chance. They have
their reasons.
M. Reasons?--what reasons?
A. Well, now, when you stop and think, they're royal good ones. They've
got to talk German when they come, haven't they? Of course. Well, they
don't know any German but Wie befinden Sie sich, and Haben Sie gut
geschlafen, and Vater unser, and Ich trinke lieber Bier als Wasser, and a
few little parlour things like that; but when it comes to talking, why,
they don't know a hundred and fifteen German words, put them all
together.
M. Oh, I see.
A. So they're going to neither eat, sleep, smoke, nor speak the truth
till they've crammed home the whole fifteen Meisterschafts auswendig!
M. Noble hearts!
M. Oh, how lovely, how gorgeous, how beautiful! Some think this world
is made of mud; I think it's made of rainbows. (Memorising.) Wenn irgend
moglich, so mochte ich noch heute Vormittag dort ankommen, da es mir sehr
daran gelegen ist--Annie, I can learn it just like nothing!
M. Schon! and we'll lock ourselves into our rooms, and at the end of two
days, whosoever may ask us a Meisterschaft question shall get a
Meisterschaft answer--and hot from the bat!
BOTH. (Reciting in unison.) Ich habe einen Hut fur meinen Sohn, ein Paar
Handschuhe fur meinen Bruder, und einen Kamm fur mich selbst gekauft.
[Exeunt.]
WIRTHIN. (Solus.) Ach, die armen Madchen, sie hassen die deutsche
Sprache, drum ist es ganz und gar unmoglich dass sie sie je lernen
konnen. Es bricht mir ja mein Herz ihre Kummer uber die Studien
anzusehen.... Warum haben sie den Entchluss gefasst in ihren Zimmern ein
Paar Tagezu bleiben?... Ja--gewiss--das versteht sich; sie sind
entmuthigt--arme Kinder!(A knock at the door.) Herein!
GR. Er ist schon wieder da, und sagt dass er nur Sie sehen will. (Hands
the card.) Auch-WIRTHIN. Gott im Himmel--der Vater der Madchen? (Puts
the card in her pocket.) Er wunscht die Tochter nicht zu treffen? Ganz
recht; also, Du schweigst.
WIRTHIN. N-not very well; I was afraid you would ask me that. You see,
they hate it, they don't take the least interest in it, and there isn't
anything to incite them to an interest, you see. And so they can't talk
at all.
S. M-m. That's bad. I had an idea that they'd get lonesome, and have
to seek society; and then, of course, my plan would work, considering the
cast-iron conditions of it.
WIRTHIN. But it hasn't, so far. I've thrown nice company in their way
--I've done my very best, in every way I could think of--but it's no use;
they won't go out, and they won't receive anybody. And a body can't
blame them; they'd be tongue-tied--couldn't do anything with a German
conversation. Now, when I started to learn German--such poor German as I
know--the case was very different: my intended was a German. I was to
live among Germans the rest of my life; and so I had to learn. Why,
bless my heart! I nearly lost the man the first time he asked me--I
thought he was talking about the measles. They were very prevalent at
the time. Told him I didn't want any in mine. But I found out the
mistake, and I was fixed for him next time.... Oh yes, Mr. Stephenson, a
sweetheart's a prime incentive.
WIRTHIN. Well, now, I'll tell you the only chance I see. Do what I
will, they won't answer my German with anything but English; if that goes
on, they'll stand stock-still. Now I'm willing to do this: I'll
straighten everything up, get matters in smooth running order, and day
after to-morrow I'll go to bed sick, and stay sick three weeks.
S. Good! You are an angel? I see your idea. The servant girl--
Time, a couple of days later. The girls discovered with their work and
primers.
MARGARET. Das weiss ich nicht. Sie ist schon vor zwei Tagen ins Bett
gegangen--
M. Sei nicht grob, Liebste. What shall we talk about first--when they
come?
M. Oh, dear, I'm all of a tremble! Let's get something ready, Annie!
(Both fall nervously to reciting): Entschuldigen Sie, mein Herr, konnen
Sie mir vielleicht sagen wie ich nach dem norddeutschen Bahnhof gehe?
(They repeat it several times, losing their grip and mixing it all up.)
Enter GRETCHEN.
M. Due liebe Zeit, they're here! And of course down goes my back hair!
Stay and receive them, dear, while I--(Leaving.)
A. I--alone? I won't! I'll go with you! (To GR.) Lassen Sie die
Herren naher treten; und sagen Sie ihnen dass wir gleich zuruckkommen
werden. [Exit.]
GR. (Solus.) Was! Sie freuen sich daruber? Und ich sollte wirklich
diese Blodsinnigen, dies grobe Rindvieh hereinlassen? In den hulflosen
Umstanden meiner gnadigen jungen Damen?--Unsinn! (Pause--thinking.)
Wohlan! Ich werde sie mal beschutzen! Sollte man nicht glauben, dass
sie einen Sparren zu viel hatten? (Tapping her skull significantly.) Was
sie mir doch Alles gesagt haben! Der Eine: Guten Morgen! wie geht es
Ihrem Herrn Schwiegervater? Du liebe Zeit! Wie sollte ich einen
Schwiegervater haben konnen! Und der Andere: 'Es thut mir sehr leid dass
Ihrer Herr Vater meinen Bruder nicht gesehen hat, als er doch gestern in
dem Laden des deutschen Kaufmannes war!' Potztausendhimmelsdonnerwetter!
Oh, ich war ganz rasend! Wie ich aber rief: 'Meine Herren, ich kenne Sie
nicht, und Sie kennen meinen Vater nicht, wissen Sie, denn er ist schon
lange durchgebrannt, und geht nicht beim Tage in einen Laden hinein,
wissen Sie--und ich habe keinen Schwiegervater, Gott sei Dank, werde auch
nie einen kriegen, werde uberhaupt, wissen Sie, ein solches Ding nie
haben, nie dulden, nie ausstehen: warum greifen Sie ein Madchen an, das
nur Unschuld kennt, das Ihnen nie Etwas zu Leide gethan hat?' Dann haben
sie sich beide die Finger in die Ohren gesteckt und gebetet:
'Allmachtiger Gott! Erbarme Dich unser?' (Pauses.) Nun, ich werde schon
diesen Schurken Einlass gonnen, aber ich werde ein Auge mit ihnen haben,
damit sie sich nicht wie reine Teufel geberden sollen. [Exit, grumbling
and shaking her head.]
GEO. I know it, Will, and it is awful; but I can't live without seeing
Margaret--I've endured it as long as I can. I should die if I tried to
hold out longer--and even German is preferable to death.
GEO. Why, of course. Das versteht sich; but you have to always think a
thing out, or you're not satisfied. But let's not go to bothering about
thinking out this present business; we're here, we're in for it; you are
as moribund to see Annie as I am to see Margaret; you know the terms:
we've got to speak German. Now stop your mooning and get at your
Meisterschaft; we've got nothing else in the world.
GEO. Why it's got to. Suppose we wandered out of it and took a chance
at the language on our own responsibility, where the nation would we be!
Up a stump, that's where. Our only safety is in sticking like wax to the
text.
GEO. Why, anything that Meisterschaft talks about. It ain't our affair.
GEO. And yet don't talk about anything long enough for it to get
embarrassing. Meisterschaft is just splendid for general conversation.
W. Yes, that's so; but it's so blamed general! Won't it sound foolish?
GEO. Now, don't fool around any more. Load up; load up; get ready. Fix
up some sentences; you'll need them in two minutes new. [They walk up
and down, moving their lips in dumb-show memorising.]
W. Look here--when we've said all that's in the book on a topic, and
want to change the subject, how can we say so?--how would a German say
it?
GEO. Well, I don't know. But you know when they mean 'Change cars,'
they say Umsteigen. Don't you reckon that will answer?
W. Tip-top! It's short and goes right to the point; and it's got a
business whang to it that's almost American. Umsteigen!--change subject!
--why, it's the very thing!
W. Haben Sie meinen Vater in dem Laden meines Bruders nicht gesehen?
A. Nein, mein Herr, ich habe Ihren Herrn Vater in dem Laden Ihres Herrn
Bruders nicht gesehen.
M. Nein, ich war gestern Abend nicht im Koncert, noch im Theater, ich war
gestern Abend zu Hause.[General break-down--long pause.]
W. (To both girls.) Wenn wir Sie storen so gehen wir gleich wieder.
W. Schon!
W. Umsteigen!
M. Um--welches?
W. Umsteigen.
A. Ihre Frau?
W. (Examining his book.) Vielleicht habe ich mich geirrt. (Shows the
place.) Nein, gerade so sagt das Buch.
GEO. Wie ist es Ihnen gegangen, seitdem ich das Vergnugen hatte, Sie
anderswo zu sehen?
GEO. (Aside.) I feel better, now. I'm beginning to catch on. (Aloud.)
Ich mochte gern morgen fruh einige Einkaufe machen und wurde Ihnen seht
verbunden sein, wenn Sie mir den Gefallen thaten, mir die Namen der
besten hiesigen Firmen aufzuschreiben.
W. (Aside.) Hang it, I was going to say that! That's one of the noblest
things in the book.
A. Ich mochte Ihnen gern begleiten, aber es ist mir wirklich heute
Morgen ganz unmoglich auszugehen. (Aside.) It's getting as easy as 9
times 7 is 46.
M. Sagen Sie dem Brieftrager, wenn's gefallig ist, er, mochte Ihnen den
eingeschriebenen Brief geben lassen.
W. Ich wurde Ihnen sehr verbunden sein, wenn Sie diese Schachtel fur
mich nach der Post tragen wurden, da mir sehr daran liegt einen meiner
Geschaftsfreunde in dem Laden des deutschen Kaufmanns heute Abend treffen
zu konnen. (Aside.) All down but nine; set'm up on the other alley!
W. Oh, bitte, verzeihen Sie; ich habe das wirklich nicht beabsichtigt.
A. (Mollified.) Sehr wohl, lassen Sie gut sein. Aber thun Sie es nicht
wieder. Sie mussen ja doch einraumen, das solche Dinge unertragliche
Verwirrung mit sich fuhren.
[As GEORGE gets fairly into the following, GRETCHEN draws a bead on him,
and lets drive at the close, but the gun snaps.]
GEO. Glauben Sie dass ich ein hubsches Wohnzimmer fur mich selbst und
ein kleines Schlafzimmer fur meinen Sohn in diesem Hotel fur funfzehn
Mark die Woche bekommen kann, oder, wurden Sie mir rathen, in einer
Privatwohnung Logis zu nehmen? (Aside.) That's a daisy!
A. Freilich glaube ich, Herr Franklin, Sie werden sich erkalten, wenn
Sie bei diesem unbestandigen Wetter ohne Ueberrock ausgehen.
GR. (Relieved--aside.) So? Man redet von Ausgehen. Das klingt schon
besser. [Sits.]
W. (To A.) Wie theuer haben Sie das gekauft? [Indicating a part of her
dress.]
GEO. Ja, obgleich dieser Stoff wunderschon ist und das Muster sehr
geschmackvoll und auch das Vorzuglichste dass es in dieser Art gibt, so
ist es doch furchtbat theuer fur einen solcehn Artikel.
A. Im Gegentheil, mein Herr, das ist sehr billig. Sehen Sie sich nur
die Qualitat an.
GEO. Moglicherweise ist es das allerneuste das man in diesem Stoff hat;
aber das Muster gefallt mir nicht.
[Pause.]
W. Umsteigen!
A. Welchen Hund haben Sie? Haben Sie den hubschen Hund des Kaufmanns,
oder den hasslichen Hund der Urgrossmutter des Lehrlings des
bogenbeinigen Zimmermanns?
GR. (Aside) Beim Teufel, sie sind alle blodsinnig geworden. In meinem
Leben habe ich nie ein so narrisches, verfluchtes, verdammtes Gesprach
gehort.
W. Bitte, umsteigen.
M. (Aside.) Oh, I've flushed an easy batch! (Aloud.) Wurden Sie mir
erlauben meine Reisetasche heir hinzustellen?
GR. (Aside.) Wo ist seine Reisetasche? Ich sehe keine.
W. Bitte sehr.
W. Ganz und gar nicht. (To Geo.) Es ist sehr schwul in diesem Coupe.
GEO. Sie haben Recht. Erlauben Sie mir, gefalligst, das Fenster zu
offnen. Ein wenig Luft wurde uns gut thun.
GR. (Aside.) Sie sind ja alle ganz und gar verruckt. Man denke sich sie
glauben dass sie auf der Eisenbahn reisen.
GEO. (Aside, to William.) Now brace up; pull all your confidence
together, my boy, and we'll try that lovely goodbye business a flutter.
I think it's about the gaudiest thing in the book, if you boom it right
along and don't get left on a base. It'll impress the girls. (Aloud.)
Lassen Sie uns gehen: es ist schon sehr spat, und ich muss morgen ganz
fruh aufstehen.
W. (To Geo.) Ich danke Ihnen hoflichst fur die Ehre die Sie mir
erweisen, aber ich kann nicht langer bleiben.
GEO. (To W.) Entschuldigen Sie mich gutigst, aber ich kann wirklich
nicht langer bleiben.
W. (To Geo.) Ich habe schon eine Einladung angenommen; ich kann wirklich
nicht langer bleiben.
W. (To GEO.) Wie! Sie wollen schon wieder gehen? Sie sind ja eben
erst gekommen.
M. (Aside.) It's just music!
GEO. (To W.) Also denken Sie doch noch nicht an's Gehen.
W. (To Geo.) Es thut mir unendlich leid, aber ich muss nach Hause.
Meine Frau wird sich wundern, was aus mir geworden ist.
GEO. (To W.) Meine Frau hat keine Ahnung wo ich bin: ich muss wirklich
jetzt fort.
W. (To Geo.) Dann will ich Sie nicht langer aufhalten; ich bedaure sehr
dass Sie uns einen so kurzen Besuch gemacht haben.
W. UMSTEIGNEN!
JOYOUS CHORUS. (All) Ich habe gehabt, du hast gehabt, er hat gehabt,
wir haben gehabt, ihr habet gehabt, sie haben gehabt.
[GRETCHEN faints, and tumbles from her chair, and the gun goes off with a
crash. Each girl, frightened, seizes the protecting hand of her
sweetheart. GRETCHEN scrambles up. Tableau.]
ALL. (In chorus--with reverent joy.) Ich habe gehabt, du hast gehabt, er
hat gehabt, wir haben gehabt, ihr habet gehabt, sie haben gehabt!
ACT III.
SCENE I.
Enter GRETCHEN, and puts her shawl on a chair. Brushing around with the
traditional feather-duster of the drama. Smartly dressed, for she is
prosperous.
GR. Wie hatte man sich das vorstellen konnen! In nur drei Wochen bin
ich schon reich geworden! (Gets out of her pocket handful after handful
of silver, which she piles on the table, and proceeds to repile and
count, occasionally ringing or biting a piece to try its quality.) Oh,
dass (with a sigh) die Frau Wirthin nur ewig krank bliebe!... Diese
edlen jungen Manner--sie sind ja so liebenswurdig! Und so fleissig!
--und so treu! Jeden Morgen kommen sie gerade um drei Viertel auf neun;
und plaudern und schwatzen, und plappern, und schnattern, die jungen
Damen auch; um Schlage zwolf nehmen sie Abschied; um Sclage eins kommen
sie schon wieder, und plauden und schwatzen und plappern und schnattern;
gerade um sechs Uhr nehmen sie wiederum Abschied; um halb acht kehren sie
noche'mal zuruck, und plaudern und schwatzen und plappern und schnattern
bis zehn Uhr, oder vielleicht ein Viertel nach, falls ihre Uhren nach
gehen (und stets gehen sie nach am Ende des Besuchs, aber stets vor
Beginn desselben), und zuweilen unterhalten sich die jungen Leute beim
Spazierengehen; und jeden Sonntag gehen sie dreimal in die Kirche; und
immer plaudern sie, und schwatzen und plappern und schnattern bis ihnen
die Zahne aus dem Munde fallen. Und ich? Durch Mangel an Uebung, ist
mir die Zunge mit Moos belegt worden! Freilich ist's mir eine dumme Zei
gewesen. Aber--um Gotteswillen, was geht das mir an? Was soll ich
daraus machen? Taglich sagt die Frau Wirthin, 'Gretchen' (dumb-show of
paying a piece of money into her hand), 'du bist eine der besten Sprach
--Lehrerinnen der Welt!' Act, Gott! Und taglich sagen die edlen jungen
Manner, 'Gretchen, liebes Kind' (money-paying again in dumb-show--three
coins), 'bleib' taub--blind--todt!' und so bleibe ich.... Jetzt wird es
ungefahr neun Uhr sein; bald kommen sie vom Spaziergehen zuruck. Also,
es ware gut dass ich meinem eigenen Schatz einen Besuch abstatte und
spazieren gehe.
Enter WIRTHIN. R.
WIRTHIN. That was Mr. Stephenson's train that just came in. Evidently
the girls are out walking with Gretchen;--can't find them, and she
doesn't seem to be around. (A ring at the door.) That's him. I'll go
see. [Exit. R.]
WIRTHIN. So well that I've never been out of my room since, till I heard
your train come in.
S. Thou miracle of fidelity! Now I argue from that, that the new plan
is working.
WIRTHIN. Working? Mr. Stephenson, you never saw anything like it in the
whole course of your life! It's absolutely wonderful the way it works.
WIRTHIN. Indeed I do mean it. I tell you, Mr. Stephenson, that plan was
just an inspiration--that's what it was. You could teach a cat German by
it.
WIRTHIN. Well, it's all Gretchen--ev-ery bit of it. I told you she was
a jewel. And then the sagacity of that child--why, I never dreamed it
was in her. Sh-she, 'Never you ask the young ladies a question--never
let on--just keep mum--leave the whole thing to me,' sh-she.
WIRTHIN. Well, sir, the amount of German gabble that that child crammed
into those two girls inside the next forty-eight hours--well, I was
satisfied! So I've never asked a question--never wanted to ask any.
I've just lain curled up there, happy. The little dears! they've flitted
in to see me a moment, every morning and noon and supper-time; and as
sure as I'm sitting here, inside of six days they were clattering German
to me like a house afire!
S. Sp-lendid, splendid!
WIRTHIN. Gretchen, she says to me at the start, 'Never you mind about
company for 'em,' sh-she--'I'm company enough.' And I says, 'All right
--fix it your own way, child;' and that she was right is shown by the fact
that to this day they don't care a straw for any company but hers.
WIRTHIN. Well, I should think so! They just dote on that hussy--can't
seem to get enough of her. Gretchen tells me so herself. And the care
she takes of them! She tells me that every time there's a moonlight
night she coaxes them out for a walk; and if a body can believe her, she
actually bullies them off to church three times every Sunday!
WIRTHIN. She's a bud, I tell you! Dear me, how she's brought those
girls' health up! Cheeks?--just roses. Gait?--they walk on
watch-springs! And happy?--by the bliss in their eyes, you'd think
they're in Paradise! Ah, that Gretchen! Just you imagine our trying to
achieve these marvels!
S. You're right--every time. Those girls--why, all they'd have wanted
to know was what we wanted done, and then they wouldn't have done it--the
mischievous young rascals!
WIRTHIN. Don't tell me? Bless you, I found that out early--when I was
bossing.
S. Well, I'm im-mensely pleased. Now fetch them down. I'm not afraid
now. They won't want to go home.
WIRTHIN. Home! I don't believe you could drag them away from Gretchen
with nine span of horses. But if you want to see them, put on your hat
and come along; they're out somewhere trapseing along with Gretchen.
[Going.]
WIRTHIN. We'll go out the side door. It's towards the Anlage. [Exit
both. L.]
Enter GEORGE and MARGARET. R. Her head lies upon his shoulder, his arm
is about her waist; they are steeped in sentiment.
GEO. Liebste!
GEO. Mein Schatzchen!--es ist mir lieb wenn Dir die Kleinigkeit
gefallt.
GEO. Du bist wie eine Blume!--So schon und hold und rein--Ich schau'
Dich an, und WehmuthSchleicht mir ins Herz hinein. Mir ist als ob ich
die HandeAufs Haupt Dir legen sollt', Betend, dass Gott Dich erhalte, So
rein und schon und hold.
GEO. Kindchen!
GEO. Ich glaube sie werden recht bald ankommen, aber--[Exit both. L.]
Enter GRETCHEN, R., in a state of mind. Slumps into a chair limp with
despair.
GR. Ach! was wird jetzt aus mir werden! Zufallig habe ich in der Ferne
den verdammten Papa gesehen!--und die Frau Wirthin auch! Oh, diese
Erscheinung--die hat mir beinahe das Leben genommen. Sie suchen die
jungen Damen--das weiss ich wenn sie diese und die jungen Herren zusammen
fanden--du heileger Gott! Wenn das gescheiht, waren wir Alle ganz und
gar verloren! Ich muss sie gleich finden, und ihr eine Warnung geben!
[Exit. L.]
Enter ANNIE and WILL, R., posed like the former couple and sentimental.
A. Ich liebe Dich schon so sehr--Deiner edlen Natur wegen. Dass du dazu
auch ein Dichter bist!--ach, mein Leben ist ubermassig reich geworden!
Wer hatte sich doch einbilden konnen dass ich einen Mann zu einem so
wunderschonen Gedicht hatte begeistern konnen?
A. Nein, nein, es ist ein echtes Wunder! Sage es noch einmal--ich flehe
Dich an.
W. Du bist wie eine Blume!--So schon und hold und rein--Ich schau' Dich
an, und WehmuthSchleicht mir ins Herz hinein. Mir ist als ob ich die
HandeAufs Haupt Dir legen sollt', Betend, dass Gott Dich erhalt, So rein
und schon und hold.
W. Oh, ja--zuweilen.
A. Wie schon!
A. (Arranging chairs.) Jetzt will ich bei Dir sitzen bleiben, und Du--
A. Du wirst mir die alte Geschichte, die immer neu bleibt, noch wieder
erzahlen.
A. Wieder!
W. Ich--sie kommen!
A. Das macht nichts. Fortan! [GEORGE unties M.'s bonnet. She reties
his cravat--interspersings of love-pats, etc., and dumb show of
love-quarrellings.]
A. Ach! Abermals!
A. Nein! (The other couple sit down, and MARGARET begins a retying of
the cravat. Enter the WIRTHIN and STEPHENSON, he imposing silence with a
sign.) Mich hungert sehr, ich verhungre!
Enter GRETCHEN.
GR. (Tears her hair.) Oh, dass ich in der Holle ware!
M. Ich liebe Dich, ich liebe Dich! Ah, ich bin so glucklich dass ich
nicht schlafen kann, nicht lesen kann, nicht reden kann, nicht--
A. Und ich! Ich bin auch so glucklich dass ich nicht speisen kann,
nicht studieren, arbeiten, denken, schreiben--
M. Komm, alle Verliebte! [They jump up, join hands, and sing in chorus--]
Du, Du, wie ich Dich liebe, Du, Du, liebest auch mich! Die, die
zartlichsten Triebe--
S. (Stepping forward.) Well! [The girls throw themselves upon his neck
with enthusiasm.]
S. My darlings! [The young men hesitate a moment, they they add their
embrace, flinging themselves on Stephenson's neck, along with the girls.]
GEO. We'll never let go till you put us on the family list.
M. (To Wirthin.) Und fur Sie auch; denn wenn Sie nicht so freundlich
gewesen waren, krank zu werden, wie waren wir je so glucklich geworden
wie jetzt?
WIRTHIN. Well, dear, I was kind, but I didn't mean it. But I ain't
sorry--not one bit--that I ain't. [Tableau.]
S. Come, now, the situation is full of hope, and grace, and tender
sentiment. If I had in the least poetic gift, I know I could improvise
under such an inspiration (each girl nudges her sweetheart) something
worthy to--to--Is there no poet among us? [Each youth turns solemnly his
back upon the other, and raises his hands in benediction over his
sweetheart's bowed head.]
BOTH YOUTHS AT ONCE. Mir ist als ob ich die HandeAufs Haupt Dir legen
sollt'--[They turn and look reproachfully at each other--the girls
contemplate them with injured surprise.]
(Curtain.)
MY BOYHOOD DREAMS
The dreams of my boyhood? No, they have not been realised. For all who
are old, there is something infinitely pathetic about the subject which
you have chosen, for in no greyhead's case can it suggest any but one
thing--disappointment. Disappointment is its own reason for its pain:
the quality or dignity of the hope that failed is a matter aside. The
dreamer's valuation of the thing lost--not another man's--is the only
standard to measure it by, and his grief for it makes it large and great
and fine, and is worthy of our reverence in all cases. We should
carefully remember that. There are sixteen hundred million people in the
world. Of these there is but a trifling number--in fact, only
thirty-eight millions--who can understand why a person should have an
ambition to belong to the French army; and why, belonging to it, he
should be proud of that; and why, having got down that far, he should
want to go on down, down, down till he struck the bottom and got on the
General Staff; and why, being stripped of this livery, or set free and
reinvested with his self-respect by any other quick and thorough process,
let it be what it might, he should wish to return to his strange serfage.
But no matter: the estimate put upon these things by the fifteen hundred
and sixty millions is no proper measure of their value: the proper
measure, the just measure, is that which is put upon them by Dreyfus, and
is cipherable merely upon the littleness or the vastness of the
disappointment which their loss cost him. There you have it: the measure
of the magnitude of a dream-failure is the measure of the disappointment
the failure cost the dreamer; the value, in others' eyes, of the thing
lost, has nothing to do with the matter. With this straightening out and
classification of the dreamer's position to help us, perhaps we can put
ourselves in his place and respect his dream--Dreyfus's, and the dreams
our friends have cherished and reveal to us. Some that I call to mind,
some that have been revealed to me, are curious enough; but we may not
smile at them, for they were precious to the dreamers, and their failure
has left scars which give them dignity and pathos. With this theme in my
mind, dear heads that were brown when they and mine were young together
rise old and white before me now, beseeching me to speak for them, and
most lovingly will I do it. Howells, Hay, Aldrich, Matthews, Stockton,
Cable, Remus--how their young hopes and ambitions come flooding back to
my memory now, out of the vague far past, the beautiful past, the
lamented past! I remember it so well--that night we met together--it was
in Boston, and Mr. Fiends was there, and Mr. Osgood, Ralph Keeler, and
Boyle O'Reilly, lost to us now these many years--and under the seal of
confidence revealed to each other what our boyhood dreams had been: reams
which had not as yet been blighted, but over which was stealing the grey
of the night that was to come--a night which we prophetically felt, and
this feeling oppressed us and made us sad. I remember that Howells's
voice broke twice, and it was only with great difficulty that he was able
to go on; in the end he wept. For he had hoped to be an auctioneer. He
told of his early struggles to climb to his goal, and how at last he
attained to within a single step of the coveted summit. But there
misfortune after misfortune assailed him, and he went down, and down, and
down, until now at last, weary and disheartened, he had for the present
given up the struggle and become the editor of the Atlantic Monthly. This
was in 1830. Seventy years are gone since, and where now is his dream?
It will never be fulfilled. And it is best so; he is no longer fitted
for the position; no one would take him now; even if he got it, he would
not be able to do himself credit in it, on account of his deliberateness
of speech and lack of trained professional vivacity; he would be put on
real estate, and would have the pain of seeing younger and abler men
intrusted with the furniture and other such goods--goods which draw a
mixed and intellectually low order of customers, who must be beguiled of
their bids by a vulgar and specialised humour and sparkle, accompanied
with antics. But it is not the thing lost that counts, but only the
disappointment the loss brings to the dreamer that had coveted that thing
and had set his heart of hearts upon it, and when we remember this, a
great wave of sorrow for Howells rises in our breasts, and we wish for
his sake that his fate could have been different. At that time Hay's
boyhood dream was not yet past hope of realisation, but it was fading,
dimming, wasting away, and the wind of a growing apprehension was blowing
cold over the perishing summer of his life. In the pride of his young
ambition he had aspired to be a steamboat mate; and in fancy saw himself
dominating a forecastle some day on the Mississippi and dictating terms
to roustabouts in high and wounding terms. I look back now, from this
far distance of seventy years, and note with sorrow the stages of that
dream's destruction. Hay's history is but Howells's, with differences of
detail. Hay climbed high toward his ideal; when success seemed almost
sure, his foot upon the very gang-plank, his eye upon the capstan,
misfortune came and his fall began. Down--down--down--ever down: Private
Secretary to the President; Colonel in the field; Charge d'Affaires in
Paris; Charge d'Affaires in Vienna; Poet; Editor of the Tribune;
Biographer of Lincoln; Ambassador to England; and now at last there he
lies--Secretary of State, Head of Foreign Affairs. And he has fallen
like Lucifer, never to rise again. And his dream--where now is his
dream? Gone down in blood and tears with the dream of the auctioneer.
And the young dream of Aldrich--where is that? I remember yet how he sat
there that night fondling it, petting it; seeing it recede and ever
recede; trying to be reconciled and give it up, but not able yet to bear
the thought; for it had been his hope to be a horse-doctor. He also
climbed high, but, like the others, fell; then fell again, and yet again,
and again and again. And now at last he can fall no further. He is old
now, he has ceased to struggle, and is only a poet. No one would risk a
horse with him now. His dream is over. Has any boyhood dream ever been
fulfilled? I must doubt it. Look at Brander Matthews. He wanted to be
a cowboy. What is he to-day? Nothing but a professor in a university.
Will he ever be a cowboy? It is hardly conceivable. Look at Stockton.
What was Stockton's young dream? He hoped to be a barkeeper. See where
he has landed. Is it better with Cable? What was Cable's young dream?
To be ring-master in the circus, and swell around and crack the whip.
What is he to-day? Nothing but a theologian and novelist. And Uncle
Remus--what was his young dream? To be a buccaneer. Look at him now.
Ah, the dreams of our youth, how beautiful they are, and how perishable!
The ruins of these might-have-beens, how pathetic! The heart-secrets that
were revealed that night now so long vanished, how they touch me as I
give them voice! Those sweet privacies, how they endeared us to each
other! We were under oath never to tell any of these things, and I have
always kept that oath inviolate when speaking with persons whom I thought
not worthy to hear them. Oh, our lost Youth--God keep its memory green
in our hearts! for Age is upon us, with the indignity of its infirmities,
and Death beckons!
Private.--If you don't know what Riggs's Disease of the Teeth is, the
dentist will tell you. I've had it--and it is more than interesting.
M.T.
EDITORIAL NOTE
IN MEMORIAM
S.L.C.
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